wiki.mbirth.de/know-how/software/linux/_posts/2017-01-20-system-wide-key-remapping-in-ubuntu.md

title	layout	created	updated	toc	tags
System wide key remapping in Ubuntu	default	2017-01-20 11:14:41 +0100	2017-01-20 11:14:41 +0100	false	know-how software linux keyboard remapping keycode

On my [hp Spectre x360]({% post_url 2016-07-26-hp-spectre-x360 %}), the Ins key is only reachable via the Fn key as in Fn+PrtScr.

So I wanted to swap both keys. System-wide - so not only in X (using xev).

I finally found this which suggested the following procedure:

1. Dump the current keyboard layout:

    sudo dumpkeys > backup.kmap
   

2. Check the keycodes you want to change (Ins = 110, PrtScr = 99):

    sudo showkey
   

   (When you're done, wait 10 seconds for it to exit automatically.)

3. Copy the dumped keyboard layout:

    cp backup.kmap ins-prt-swap.kmap
   

4. Edit it to swap all occurrences of 99 to 110 and vice versa, e.g. change:

    keycode  99 = ...
    ...
    keycode 110 = Insert.....
   

   to

    keycode 110 = ...
    ...
    keycode  99 = Insert.....
   

5. The suggested sudo setcon --save didn't work for me, but Ubuntu loads the active keymap from the file /etc/console-setup/cached.kmap.gz. So I gzipped my ins-prt-swap.kmap and copied the resulting ins-prt-swap.kmap.gz to /etc/console-setup/cached.kmap.gz.