On Apache
Under GNU General Public License
2025-11-21 17:31 @216.73.216.164 CrawledBy Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; ClaudeBot/1.0; +claudebot@anthropic.com)
SETXKBMAP(1) General Commands Manual SETXKBMAP(1)
NAME
setxkbmap - set the keyboard using the X Keyboard Extension
SYNOPSIS
setxkbmap [ args ] [ layout [ variant [ option ... ] ] ]
DESCRIPTION
The setxkbmap command maps the keyboard to use the layout determined by the options speci-
fied on the command line.
An XKB keymap is constructed from a number of components which are compiled only as
needed. The source for all of the components can be found in /usr/share/X11/xkb.
OPTIONS
-compat name
Specifies the name of the compatibility map component used to construct a keyboard
layout.
-config file
Specifies the name of an XKB configuration file which describes the keyboard to be
used.
-device device
Specifies the numeric device id of the input device to be updated with the new
keyboard layout. If not specified, the core keyboard device of the X server is up-
dated.
-display display
Specifies the display to be updated with the new keyboard layout.
-geometry name
Specifies the name of the geometry component used to construct a keyboard layout.
-help Prints a message describing the valid input to setxkbmap.
-I directory
Adds a directory to the list of directories to be used to search for specified
layout or rules files.
-keycodes name
Specifies the name of the keycodes component used to construct a keyboard layout.
-keymap name
Specifies the name of the keymap description used to construct a keyboard layout.
-layout name
Specifies the name of the layout used to determine the components which make up
the keyboard description. The -layout option may only be used once. Multiple lay-
outs can be specified as a comma-separated list.
-model name
Specifies the name of the keyboard model used to determine the components which
make up the keyboard description. Only one model may be specified on the command
line.
-option name
Specifies the name of an option to determine the components which make up the key-
board description; multiple options may be specified, one per -option flag. Note
that setxkbmap adds options specified in the command line to the options that were
set before (as saved in root window properties). If you want to replace all previ-
ously specified options, use the -option flag with an empty argument first.
-print With this option setxkbmap just prints component names in a format acceptable by
xkbcomp (an XKB keymap compiler) and exits. The option can be used for tests in-
stead of a verbose option and in cases when one needs to run both the setxkbmap
and the xkbcomp in chain (see below).
-query With this option setxkbmap just prints the current rules, model, layout, variant,
and options, then exits.
-rules file
Specifies the name of the rules file used to resolve the requested layout and
model to a set of component names.
-symbols name
Specifies the name of the symbols component used to construct a keyboard layout.
-synch Force synchronization for X requests.
-types name
Specifies the name of the types component used to construct a keyboard layout.
-variant name
Specifies which variant of the keyboard layout should be used to determine the
components which make up the keyboard description. The -variant option may only be
used once. Multiple variants can be specified as a comma-separated list and will
be matched with the layouts specified with -layout.
-verbose|-v [level]
Specifies level of verbosity in output messages. Valid levels range from 0 (least
verbose) to 10 (most verbose). The default verbosity level is 5. If no level is
specified, each -v or -verbose flag raises the level by 1.
-version
Prints the program's version number.
USING WITH xkbcomp
If you have an Xserver and a client shell running on different computers and some XKB con-
figuration files on those machines are different, you can get problems specifying a key-
board map by model, layout, and options names. This is because setxkbmap converts its ar-
guments to names of XKB configuration files according to files that are on the client-side
computer, then sends these file names to the server where xkbcomp has to compose a com-
plete keyboard map using files which the server has. Thus if the sets of files differ in
some way, the names that setxkbmap generates can be unacceptable on the server side. You
can solve this problem by running the xkbcomp on the client side too. With the -print op-
tion setxkbmap just prints the file names in an appropriate format to its stdout and this
output can be piped directly to the xkbcomp input. For example, the command
setxkbmap us -print | xkbcomp - $DISPLAY
makes both steps run on the same (client) machine and loads a keyboard map into the
server.
SEE ALSO
xkbcomp(1), xkeyboard-config(7)
FILES
/usr/share/X11/xkb
X Version 11 setxkbmap 1.3.2 SETXKBMAP(1)
Generated by $Id: phpMan.php,v 4.55 2007/09/05 04:42:51 chedong Exp $ Author: Che Dong
On Apache
Under GNU General Public License
2025-11-21 17:31 @216.73.216.164 CrawledBy Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; ClaudeBot/1.0; +claudebot@anthropic.com)