![photo of Jim Hall](/sites/default/files/pictures/jimhall1.jpg)
| Connect jimfhall
Minnesota
Jim Hall is an open source software advocate and developer, best known for usability testing in GNOME and as the founder + project coordinator of FreeDOS. At work, Jim is CEO of Hallmentum, an IT executive consulting company that provides hands-on IT Leadership training, workshops, and coaching.
Authored Comments
I had to do something like this on a laptop I bought. The laptop had a keyboard that sent the wrong key code for the backslash key (\). The "shift" on this key is the pipe symbol (|).
To fix, I had to use "setkeycodes 56 43" to reset the correct key codes for that key. That's system-wide. To make the fix at every boot, just create a new /etc/rc.d/rc.local file like this:
#!/bin/bash
setkeycodes 56 43
exit 0
And:
sudo chmod 750 /etc/rc.d/rc.local
With that, you don't need to do anything at the user level. Note that this fix doesn't impact backslash or pipe on my external keyboard, which are correct.
I think there's a lot of value in learning about programming. I don't care if you work in IT later on, but learning a bit of programming removes the "it's magic" impression a lot of people carry about technology.