# German Locale and Keymaps, SSH



## alpha-lemming (Mar 1, 2011)

Hello,

I installed FreeBSD 8.1 Release recently with a fairly standard configuration and US keymap.

I now have a need to use German umlaut characters, so I plugged a German USB Keyboard into my local machine, set the local input language to German and logged in (per SSH) to the FreeBSD box. 
Doing this:


```
export LANG=de_DE.ISO8859-1
```

allows existing German filenames to be displayed properly, but I can't type any special characters; the umlaut characters seem to be mapped to arrows or something. 
So I tried:


```
cd /usr/share/syscon/keymaps && kbdcontrol -l german.iso.kbd
```

and got:


```
kbdcontrol: setting keymap: Inappropriate ioctl for device
```

I also tried setting the keymap to "German ISO" from sysinstall, but still no joy. 

Any ideas?

Thanks!


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## SirDice (Mar 1, 2011)

Have a look in the handbook: Chapter 23 Localization - I18N/L10N Usage and Setup

(The handbook is available in German too: http://www.freebsd.org/doc/de_DE.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/)


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