How to fix the missing keymaps in Debian and Ubuntu (localectl: Failed to read list of keymaps)

Written by Claudio Kuenzler - 4 comments

Published on November 15th 2022 - Listed in Linux

While investigating a missing keyboard mapping error in Citrix Workspace app, one of the first ideas was to actually verify that the system keyboard mappings (keymaps) are installed on the system.

Although it turned out to be another cause in the Citrix Workspace app, the analysis let me stumble on another problem with the keymaps: The keymaps are not detected by the system!

keymaps, kbd and systemd

The whole configuration about keymaps has changed in recent years. The keymaps are part of the kbd project (Linux keyboard tools). The description of kbd is:

The kbd project contains utilities for managing Linux console (Linux console, virtual terminals, keyboard, etc.) – mainly, what they do is loading console fonts and keyboard maps.

However it's not kbd itself loading the keymaps. On a Debian-based system, this job is supposedly done by the console-data package, which holds the actual keymap files - acorrding to the package description:

This package provides the standard data files for the Linux console tools. This includes keyboard definitions (keymaps), console fonts for various encodings, maps defining the standard charsets for use by text applications, and fallback tables allowing to approximate an unavailable character's glyph with the glyph of another character in the current font. 

But that is still not enough. To view and configure keymaps, a command localectl is in charge. This command should then talk to a Systemd service, called systemd-localed. From localectl's man page:

localectl may be used to query and change the system locale and keyboard layout settings. It communicates with systemd-localed(8) to modify files such as /etc/locale.conf and /etc/vconsole.conf.

The ArchiWiki article on Keyboard configuration makes a pretty good summary how this all works together:

Keyboard mappings (keymaps), console fonts and console maps for the Linux console are provided by the kbd package (a dependency of systemd), which also provides many low-level tools for managing text console. In addition, systemd also provides the localectl tool, which can control both the system locale and keyboard layout settings for both the console and Xorg. 

So far to the theory. The reality on Debian-based systems, including Ubuntu and Linux Mint, is different.

Failed to read list of keymaps: No such file or directory

The first interesting hint is shown when simply launching localectl (which is installed through the systemd package). Without any parameters, the output should show the current languge settings (locale) and the keyboard configuration for both the graphical sessions (X11) and the console (VC, short for virtual console):

ck@mint ~ $ localectl
   System Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8
                  LC_NUMERIC=de_CH.UTF-8
                  LC_MONETARY=de_CH.UTF-8
                  LC_PAPER=de_CH.UTF-8
                  LC_NAME=de_CH.UTF-8
                  LC_ADDRESS=de_CH.UTF-8
                  LC_TELEPHONE=de_CH.UTF-8
                  LC_MEASUREMENT=de_CH.UTF-8
                  LC_IDENTIFICATION=de_CH.UTF-8
       VC Keymap: n/a
      X11 Layout: ch
       X11 Model: pc105
     X11 Variant: legacy

From the output we can see that VC Keymap is not set. Even though there is no negative impact on the console noticeable, it still looks "weird". Let's try to set a keymap for the console. To find the available keymaps we can first list them:

ck@mint ~ $ localectl list-keymaps
Failed to read list of keymaps: No such file or directory

Erm... what? Failed to read? No such file or directory? What exactly is missing here? To find out more, we can run strace in front of the localectl command to try and find the paths in question:

ck@mint ~ $ strace -f localectl list-keymaps
execve("/usr/bin/localectl", ["localectl", "list-keymaps"], 0x7ffd6b311870 /* 63 vars */) = 0
brk(NULL)                               = 0x557c2522f000
arch_prctl(0x3001 /* ARCH_??? */, 0x7ffe3f53bf50) = -1 EINVAL (Invalid argument)
mmap(NULL, 8192, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) = 0x7f212aa64000
access("/etc/ld.so.preload", R_OK)      = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
[...]
sendmsg(3, {msg_name=NULL, msg_namelen=0, msg_iov=[{iov_base="\0AUTH EXTERNAL\r\nDATA\r\n", iov_len=22}, {iov_base="NEGOTIATE_UNIX_FD\r\n", iov_len=19}, {iov_base="BEGIN\r\n", iov_len=7}], msg_iovlen=3, msg_controllen=0, msg_flags=0}, MSG_DONTWAIT|MSG_NOSIGNAL) = 48
gettid()                                = 15142
futex(0x7f212aa621d0, FUTEX_WAKE_PRIVATE, 2147483647) = 0
gettid()                                = 15142
newfstatat(AT_FDCWD, "/usr/share/keymaps", 0x7ffe3f53be90, AT_SYMLINK_NOFOLLOW) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
newfstatat(AT_FDCWD, "/usr/share/kbd/keymaps", 0x7ffe3f53be90, AT_SYMLINK_NOFOLLOW) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
newfstatat(AT_FDCWD, "/usr/lib/kbd/keymaps", 0x7ffe3f53be90, AT_SYMLINK_NOFOLLOW) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
newfstatat(AT_FDCWD, "/lib/kbd/keymaps", 0x7ffe3f53be90, AT_SYMLINK_NOFOLLOW) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
openat(AT_FDCWD, "/usr/share/locale/locale.alias", O_RDONLY|O_CLOEXEC) = 4
newfstatat(4, "", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=2996, ...}, AT_EMPTY_PATH) = 0
read(4, "# Locale name alias data base.\n#"..., 4096) = 2996
read(4, "", 4096)                       = 0
close(4)                                = 0
openat(AT_FDCWD, "/usr/share/locale/en_US/LC_MESSAGES/libc.mo", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
openat(AT_FDCWD, "/usr/share/locale/en/LC_MESSAGES/libc.mo", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
openat(AT_FDCWD, "/usr/share/locale-langpack/en_US/LC_MESSAGES/libc.mo", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
openat(AT_FDCWD, "/usr/share/locale-langpack/en/LC_MESSAGES/libc.mo", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
ioctl(1, TCGETS, {B38400 opost isig icanon echo ...}) = 0
ioctl(2, TCGETS, {B38400 opost isig icanon echo ...}) = 0
writev(2, [{iov_base="\33[0;1;31m", iov_len=9}, {iov_base="Failed to read list of keymaps: "..., iov_len=57}, {iov_base="\33[0m", iov_len=4}, {iov_base="\n", iov_len=1}], 4Failed to read list of keymaps: No such file or directory
) = 71
recvmsg(3, {msg_name=NULL, msg_namelen=0, msg_iov=[{iov_base="DATA\r\nOK 3933d969e905dbff46be4e1"..., iov_len=256}], msg_iovlen=1, msg_controllen=0, msg_flags=MSG_CMSG_CLOEXEC}, MSG_DONTWAIT|MSG_CMSG_CLOEXEC) = 58
sendmsg(3, {msg_name=NULL, msg_namelen=0, msg_iov=[{iov_base="l\1\0\1\0\0\0\0\1\0\0\0m\0\0\0\1\1o\0\25\0\0\0/org/fre"..., iov_len=128}], msg_iovlen=1, msg_controllen=0, msg_flags=0}, MSG_DONTWAIT|MSG_NOSIGNAL) = 128
recvmsg(3, {msg_namelen=0}, MSG_DONTWAIT|MSG_CMSG_CLOEXEC) = -1 EAGAIN (Resource temporarily unavailable)
ppoll([{fd=3, events=POLLIN}], 1, {tv_sec=24, tv_nsec=999909000}, NULL, 8) = 1 ([{fd=3, revents=POLLIN}], left {tv_sec=24, tv_nsec=999598218})
recvmsg(3, {msg_name=NULL, msg_namelen=0, msg_iov=[{iov_base="l\2\1\1\v\0\0\0\1\0\0\0=\0\0\0\6\1s\0\6\0\0\0", iov_len=24}], msg_iovlen=1, msg_controllen=0, msg_flags=MSG_CMSG_CLOEXEC}, MSG_DONTWAIT|MSG_CMSG_CLOEXEC) = 24
recvmsg(3, {msg_name=NULL, msg_namelen=0, msg_iov=[{iov_base=":1.296\0\0\5\1u\0\1\0\0\0\10\1g\0\1s\0\0\7\1s\0\24\0\0\0"..., iov_len=67}], msg_iovlen=1, msg_controllen=0, msg_flags=MSG_CMSG_CLOEXEC}, MSG_DONTWAIT|MSG_CMSG_CLOEXEC) = 67
close(3)                                = 0
exit_group(1)                           = ?
+++ exited with 1 +++

In the strace output we can see that a couple of paths were checked for keymaps:

• /usr/share/keymaps
• /usr/share/kbd/keymaps
• /usr/lib/kbd/keymaps
• /lib/kbd/keymaps

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Comments (newest first)

Jan from Czechia wrote on Nov 8th, 2023:

Still valid in Debian 12 (Bookworm), thanks for the working solution :)

Sol from wrote on Oct 14th, 2023:

Thank you, this fixed the problem for me.
I’ve had to also run `setupcon -k` at the end, to live-reload the updated keymap.

Cyber Bob from Cyberland wrote on Oct 10th, 2023:

Wow. This was informative. I was running around in circles trying to figure that one out. You saved me hours. Cheers!

Eberhard from DE/Bavaria wrote on Apr 17th, 2023:

Thank you that fixed my problem, too
elanger@nbwwks284:~$ localectl status
System Locale: LANG=de_DE.UTF-8
VC Keymap: de
X11 Layout: de
X11 Model: pc105
X11 Options: terminate:ctrl_alt_bksp