I am quite new to Linux and still searching for my flavor. I was trying CachyOS, Arch, Debian, Fedora, and now Manjaro. As I am using Gnome, most of the Arch-based distros still have annoying stuff installed that I don’t need. Now I tried Manjaro, and I really love it. I like the Manjaro Application Utility instead of the Gnome Software Center. Well, that said I was now installing Manjaro on a virtual disk so that I could take my installation with me on an external NVMe drive. As I have several tools installed but also personal data, I wanted to encrypt the installation in case I lose the disk. I am using a German keyboard, so normally when I have issues with the keymap in LUKS, I simply install everything in German and then change the language back to English. Like this, I get the right keymap on the prompt. With Manjaro I can’t get it to work; the keymap stays US whatever I do. I checked the vconsole.conf, the hooks of the mkinitcpio.conf (to be sure that keymap is in front of encrypt), added sd-vconsole to the mkinitcpio.conf hooks, and I regenerated the initrd several times. Nothing seems to work… I read that Grub could not set a keymap this early in the boot process… I am a bit lost now, and I was asking myself if maybe there would be some help or a simple “it does not work” in here.
You can’t change it. The us keymap is hardcored in the sourecode of Grub. In theory, if you edit Grubs source and compile your own version, you can use your own keymap.
Personly, I would reinstall and set up an unencrypted boot partition. With it, Grub is not opening the Luks container. It is usually opened by systemd in the boot process. This has also the advantage, that you can use a Luks2 container.
The grubx64.efi responsible of unlocking the LUKS container has no support for other keymaps than us.
Because the actual configuration of grub is locked away inside the container the only known method of having a given keymap in the early grub stage, is to create a custom core loader as described in the Arch Wiki.
This is more complicated than converting the system to use EFI directly or an intermediary loader like rEFInd or Limini.
I was now installing Manjaro on a virtual disk so that I could take my installation with me on an external NVMe drive. As I have several tools installed but also personal data, I wanted to encrypt the installation in case I lose the disk. I am using a German keyboard, so normally when I have issues with the keymap in LUKS, I simply install everything in German and then change the language back to English. Like this, I get the right keymap on the prompt. With Manjaro I can’t get it to work; the keymap stays US whatever I do. I checked the vconsole.conf, the hooks of the mkinitcpio.conf (to be sure that keymap is in front of encrypt), added sd-vconsole to the mkinitcpio.conf hooks, and I regenerated the initrd several times. Nothing seems to work… I read that Grub could not set a keymap this early in the boot process… I am a bit lost now, and I was asking myself if maybe there would be some help or a simple “it does not work” in here. 