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I have a keyboard on which the "P" key does not work but I can't see the point of chucking it away for one defect. I therefore want to map one of the working keys to "P". This has proved a mighty, almost circular, challenge. As is typical in Linux as well, there are many solutions, all of which kind of work but not really. Ideally I want the keys swapped anytime I boot, be it to the terminal (CLI) or X/Desktop (GUI).

The "circular" problem is that's a right mission to enter the character "P" in the fixes below if you don't actually have a character P.

How best to map a working key (like section/degrees) to a non-working key like "P"?

Marc
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1 Answers1

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  1. Determine the "key code" of your working key (in my case the ยง called "section" or "silcrow"):

    showkey

Run this then press your working key. It should show something like:

keycode 41 press
keycode 41 release

So "41" is the keycode of my working key.

  1. Map that physical keycode to your missing key.

    keycode 41 = p | sudo loadkeys

Now, if you can't actually type your missing key (e.g. "p") it get's... interesting...

The best solution I've found is to echo $'\x70' into a file (bash script) and then go in there and use it in a script command. Let's say you want to add the mapping to your boot routine - you would add it to the file ~/.bashrc.

echo keycode 41 = p >> ~/.bashrc

Now you need to edit .bashrc and change the last line from:

echo keycode 41 = p

to 

echo keycode 41 = p | sudo loadkeys

Now, if you reboot it should map key 41 (section) to "P".

Note 1: The following solution:

xmodmap -e "keycode 49 = P"

is a good method BUT it only works if you booted X (Desktop). It's nice because it doesn't require the dreaded sudo so you can add it to your startup ~/.bashrc.

Note 2: Using Ctrl+Shift+u and entering 0050 (the ASCII code for "P") did not work.

Marc
  • 412