Debian Preseeding "Trixie": How to force German keyboard layout with English system language?

Path	csiph.com!news.samoylyk.net!gothmog.csi.it!bofh.it!news.nic.it!robomod
From	M Ghost <moritzguttek@gmail.com>
Newsgroups	linux.debian.project
Subject	Debian Preseeding "Trixie": How to force German keyboard layout with English system language?
Date	Thu, 04 Sep 2025 21:30:01 +0200
Message-ID	<LrnOF-cPlQ-3@gated-at.bofh.it> (permalink)
X-Original-To	debian-project@lists.debian.org
X-Mailbox-Line	From debian-project-request@lists.debian.org Thu Sep 4 19:27:39 2025
Old-Return-Path	<moritzguttek@gmail.com>
X-Amavis-Spam-Status	No, score=1.7 required=4.0 tests=DKIM_SIGNED,DKIM_VALID, DKIM_VALID_AU,DKIM_VALID_EF,FREEMAIL_FROM,HTML_MESSAGE, RCVD_IN_DNSWL_NONE autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.6
X-Amavis-Spam-Status	No, score=-0.199 tagged_above=-10000 required=5.3 tests=[BAYES_00=-2, DKIM_SIGNED=0.1, DKIM_VALID=-0.1, DKIM_VALID_AU=-0.1, DKIM_VALID_EF=-0.1, FREEMAIL_FROM=0.001, HTML_MESSAGE=2, RCVD_IN_DNSWL_NONE=-0.0001] autolearn=no autolearn_force=no
X-Policyd-Weight	using cached result; rate: -5.5
X-Gm-Message-State	AOJu0Yy97uGN/o0ezAkhu4lSGpJyQzUyZ6bDAJgQFS6X3OPTigtUgLw3 Ve4Fes6hxQi2yIEyvEnN94drgvi1IhufKhRPPQp8nmyyZdeWhnk26robDqKZ1A/Q0ghb0zSFeV2 slnZi0Lg8x7HtA2sPe7i/z3Pv/gBxeXltXjm4Vz0=
X-Gm-Gg	ASbGncsCLgdKmXbLjpXrcms4vSa6f0O+d2Z6lHEli43gq3zI7T+FBP4VgOKEmGAZm+u fcTENUPQZQr4xJEE/IdWx1QN7QK+1aiQTEUzIb7/AlUKij1EYah1hRWvvRBwiGQb/Z5b1CaKCym hZzY0XTmZYpOUKllxZLCAT7d0AoHKEAAHzibMuBTif0TMDdAeuRYgccYY7fLnSOmQE0wXcxXoSh xdNiONR+mnRRCmfWErjW0sx6g==
X-Google-SMTP-Source	AGHT+IHJJ3jMlTP6Rq3AqNWVtH01+/jSxgkXsvsIsXrX16V7mBs9UjLgI6La+08aHcl/gQDNWeb7xO4iiZ7x4pJFN5Y=
X-Received	by 2002:a17:90b:5485:b0:32b:4c51:629d with SMTP id 98e67ed59e1d1-32b4c516426mr10873009a91.9.1757013449899; Thu, 04 Sep 2025 12:17:29 -0700 (PDT)
MIME-Version	1.0
X-Gm-Features	Ac12FXw14AkP2cE5UKveg-Rndt7zJTlx8Up_N2tOv_dSvmuwSSTcINPaWHvZ_eI
Content-Type	multipart/alternative; boundary="0000000000008c0445063dfe9254"
Moderated	yes
X-Mailing-List	<debian-project@lists.debian.org> archive/latest/31967
List-ID	<debian-project.lists.debian.org>
List-URL	<https://lists.debian.org/debian-project/>
List-Archive	https://lists.debian.org/msgid-search/CAGZQxg+AF0rXgrvig8bVUCa7SY05OQJeG9GMhKZeFQW3pDu2YQ@mail.gmail.com
Approved	robomod@news.nic.it
Lines	96
Organization	linux.* mail to news gateway
Sender	robomod@news.nic.it
X-Original-Date	Thu, 4 Sep 2025 21:17:19 +0200
X-Original-Message-ID	<CAGZQxg+AF0rXgrvig8bVUCa7SY05OQJeG9GMhKZeFQW3pDu2YQ@mail.gmail.com>
Xref	csiph.com linux.debian.project:13931

Show key headers only | View raw

[Multipart message — attachments visible in raw view] - view raw

Hello everyone,

I'm trying to create a preseeded installation for Debian 13 "Trixie" (using
the amd64 netinstaller), and I'm running into a persistent issue with the
keyboard layout that I can't seem to solve.

My goal is simple:

   -

   The final installed system should have *English* as its language and
   locale (en_US.UTF-8).
   -

   The keyboard layout, however, must be *German* (de).

All other parts of my preseed file (partitioning, package selection, etc.)
are working perfectly. The only issue is that the keyboard layout always
defaults to US English, ignoring my settings.

I've tried numerous combinations in my preseed.cfg. My most recent attempt
looked like this, trying to be as explicit as possible:

# Localization
d-i debian-installer/language string en
d-i debian-installer/country string DE
d-i debian-installer/locale string en_US.UTF-8

# Keyboard selection
d-i console-setup/ask_detect boolean false
d-i keyboard-configuration/xkb-keymap select de
d-i keyboard-configuration/layoutcode string de

Despite these settings, the result is always an English layout. For due
diligence, I did a manual installation where I selected these options
interactively, which worked perfectly. Comparing the debconf-get-selections
--installer output from that successful install with my preseed file
doesn't reveal any obvious differences that would explain this behavior.

What is the definitive, canonical combination of preseed options to
reliably force a specific keyboard layout when it differs from the chosen
system language and locale? Is there a specific option I'm missing that
overrides xkb-keymap?

Thanks for any help you can provide.

Back to linux.debian.project | Previous | Next — Next in thread | Find similar | Unroll thread

Thread

Debian Preseeding "Trixie": How to force German keyboard layout with English system language? M Ghost <moritzguttek@gmail.com> - 2025-09-04 21:30 +0200
  Re: Debian Preseeding "Trixie": How to force German keyboard layout with English system language? Colin Watson <cjwatson@debian.org> - 2025-09-05 03:20 +0200

csiph-web