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

Cross-posted to 2 groups.

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On Thu, Sep 04, 2025 at 09:17:19PM +0200, M Ghost wrote:
>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.

Redirecting to debian-boot; debian-project is for project-wide 
discussions rather than this sort of thing.

>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.

This sounds as though perhaps you tried to do the preseeding using a 
method that's only processed after the locale and keyboard questions 
have been asked.  
https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/amd64/apbs01.en.html#preseed-methods 
explains this, and offers two different suggestions on how to handle it.

>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?

https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/amd64/apbs04.en.html#preseed-l10n 
should describe the set of options, bearing in mind the above.

Regards,

-- 
Colin Watson (he/him)                              [cjwatson@debian.org]

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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

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