G51 Linux backslash/pipe key remapping

The following procedure is for OpenSuse 11.1. It may/may not work for other Linux distributions.

The G51 has a key that the default Suse setup incorrectly interprets. The key is the backslash/pipe key. It interprets it as "<" and ">". To get around this you need to edit the keyboard map file for the raw (console) mode and make a local "fix" file for Xorg mode. This procedure will last through all runlevels, which is a good thing. You must be root to do the console mode fix.

Editing the keyboard map for console mode:
Look in /etc/sysconfig/keyboard. Search for KEYTABLE in the file. This will tell you the default keyboard map file it's using. Make a note of it. In my case it is us.map.gz. Now, cd /usr/share/kbd/keymaps/i386/qwerty. gunzip us.map.gz. Using your favorite editor, edit the us.map file and search for 86. This is the keycode that we want to change. Change the line so that it reads like this:

keycode 86 = backslash bar

Save the file.
Recompress it: gzip us.map
Done with raw mode.
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Fixing the key for Xorg mode:
su to yourself, not root. You must be in your own home directory for this fix, so type in cd <enter>.

With your favorite editor create a file called .Xmodmap - It must have the dot before the filename and it must be spelled exactly as shown. Add the following line:

keycode 94 = backslash bar

Save the file.

In order to make both changes effective, reboot. Your "|/" key should now function as normal.

 

Just wanted to say thanks for this, I was running in circles trying to find a Variant or model that would fix this. I'm using Arch Linux and the us.map.gz I needed to edit was in /usr/share/kbd/keymaps/i386/qwerty/ , and i needed to manually add

Code:

exec xmodmap ~/.Xmodmap &

to my .xinitrc for it to take effect in X.

 

Thank you!!