Tag Archives: Raspberry Pi

Raspberry Pi with Linux LESSON 11: Fixing Problem with Keyboard and Special Characters

The standard boot configuration of the Raspberry pi can lead to some characters not working properly on US keyboards. In particular, the shift-number characters like !,~,# can not be where you expect them. The easiest way to fix this is to edit the nano /etc/default/keyboard file. The following should fix things for you.

$ sudo nano /etc/default/keyboard

Then on the line for XKBLAYOUT change it to:

XKBLAYOUT=”us”

That should make your pi work properly with most US keyboards.

Raspberry Pi Linux LESSON 10: Properly and Safely Shutting Down the Raspberry Pi

It is very easy to corrupt the SD card and your operating system on your Raspberry Pi. It is important to always properly shut down the raspberry pi. Never just remove power, always shutdown first. Never remove the SD card while the pi is booted or while it is powered. To remove the SD card, first shutdown the pi, then take the power off, then remove the card. Similarly, never plug the card in while the pi is powered.

The simplest way to shutdown the pi is with the command:

$ sudo halt

Instead, if you want to shutdown and then reboot, you can use:

$ sudo reboot

These two commands will take care of things most of the time. If for some reason sudo halt does not work, you can try the following:

$ sudo shutdown -h now

That will pretty much always work.