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I can disable Caps Lock in the GUI using following command:

setxkbmap -option ctrl:nocaps

But how can I disable it completely in the console, on a machine without X/GUI ?

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400 the Cat
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2 Answers2

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dumpkeys | sed s/Caps_Lock/Control/ | loadkeys

On Debian and alike, just putting XKBOPTIONS="ctrl:nocaps" in /etc/default/keyboard works for both the console and X11 -- provided that you have the console-setup package installed. Use the setupcon command to immediately re-load that file.

  • adding `XKBOPTIONS="ctrl:nocaps"` to `/etc/default/keyboard` has no effect. And I don't have `dumpkeys` command and cannot find package to install it on Debian. – 400 the Cat Jan 22 '21 at 11:30
  • `dumpkeys` is part of the `kbd` package. I cannot test it right now, but I think that `setupcon` reloads `/etc/default/keyboard`. If it doesn't, then just reboot ;-) –  Jan 22 '21 at 11:34
  • installed `kbd`, but still don't have `setupcon` command. I have rebooted, but that did not help. – 400 the Cat Jan 22 '21 at 11:38
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    `setupcon` is part of `console-setup`, not of `kbd`. As I said, it's `dumpkeys` which is part of `kbd`. But they're both installed by default on Debian, and `dumpkeys` + `loadkeys` are present in any PC Linux distro I know of. If you stripped-down & "optimized" your system, you're in for a ride ;-) I wish you good-luck! –  Jan 22 '21 at 13:40
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Have been struggling to find information on line about this. I went with creating a "custom keymap", as suggested by the Arch Wiki. My commands were something like:

zcat /usr/share/kbd/keymaps/i386/qwerty/uk.map.gz > ~/personal.map
vim ~/personal.map
sudo cp ~/personal.map /usr/share/kbd/keymaps/

I used i386/qwerty/uk.map as a base because it was what I mostly wanted. It includes other maps meaning the file is much smaller than you'd get from dumpkeys. I only wanted to override a couple of modifier keys so this worked well for me.

You can verify it's getting recognized by running:

localectl list-keymaps | grep personal

and then set it as default by running:

sudo localectl set-keymap personal
Sam Mason
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