keyboard is messed up in guest machine - Linux (Host) / Windows Vista (Guest) -> duplicate of #2595

[Thomas]

Hi everybody,

I am using the following set-up:

Arch Linux 2.6.31 (Host machine) Windows Vista Enterprise (latest update) (Guest machine) VirtualBox Version 3.0.8

I am using a non-standard keyboard layout, namely DvorakX (I did attach the keyboard layout file for the X-Server to this report -- in case this helps), on the host machine, i.e. on Linux. I know this keyboard map is not available on Windows, but I am happy to use QUERTY on the guest machine, i.e. on the Windows. I chose the German (IBM) on the guest machine. I can type, however, I experience the following:

Quite a lot of physical keys are swapped (with reference to the layout on the guest, i.e. QUERTY) for example 'f' with 'g', or 'j' with 'k', etc. Also, I cannot type in numbers at all!

When I change the keyboard layout on the guest (Windows), the same physical keys a swapped.

I don't have any idea how work around this.

[Thomas]

dvorak x -- keyboard layout

[Michael Thayer]

This is a known problem, and is due to the way VirtualBox works out how to map X11 keyboard events to keys on a PC keyboard (this is rather more complicated than you might think, not least as X11 can support keyboards very different to a standard PC one). At some point we will probably introduce support for determining the mapping using the XKB extension, which would probably fix the problem for you, but unfortunately there are many higher priority tasks which need to be finished first.

[Gene Selkov]

I am not sure if that's the same problem or a different one; in the newest VB (3.1.2) -- as well as in 3.0 -- with programmer dvorak layout selected in the guest windows system the entire top row of the keyboard does not work, plus '@' '^{' are missing. Everything works if the US qwerty layout is enabled in the quest system, even while the host layout is set to programmer dvorak (the host is a linux), but that's of no use.}

The only remedy is the on-screen keyboard in windows.

[Gene Selkov]

Correction: regardless of the guest layout, the top keyboard row is inactive when Programmer Dvorak is selected on the linux host.

[Michael Thayer]

Sounds like the same issue; see my comment above.

[efaeo]

Same problem here with the german "neo 2.0" keyboard layout. As a workaround for me worked using the "Remote Display". It is quite a bit inconvenient but workes fine here.

[Michael Thayer]

This ticket has been marked a duplicate of #2595.