Slash ("/") in Thinkpad T420 ABNT keyboard

Question

I have a Lenovo Thinkpad T420 with a Brazilian ABNT keyboard layout. This is a rather unique layout where the slash is between the context menu key and the arrow keys.

However, the slash key does not work! How could I make it work?

Answer 1

You can change the system-wide keyboard configuration (including TTY), by running:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure keyboard-configuration

as described in this SO answer.

To choose the thinkpadz60 layout shown in @brandizzi's answer, select the "IBM ThinkPad Z60m/Z60t/Z61m/Z61t" layout in the list. It should be above the "Generic PC" layout:

EDIT: Also works on Debian

Answer 2

I solved it (in part) by adding the following line in /etc/default/keyboard:

XKBMODEL="thinkpadz60"

Actually, I replaced the line XKBMODEL="" with XKBMODEL="thinkpadz60". Then, I restarted the notebook. (Actually, I believe one would have just to restart X by running restart lightd or by pressing Ctrl+Alt+BackSpace. I suspect that it is even possible to reload this X configuration without restarting it but I have not found how to do it yet.)

Unfortunately, the key still does not work at the text terminals. However, since I use (most of the time) the GNOME Terminal instead of the pure text ones, it is a minor nuisance because it works in the terminal emulator.

(If you do not get it working yet, you can also type slash by pressing AltGr+Q and question mark by typing AltGr+W)

Answer 3

I recently update to Ubuntu 22.04 and the keyboard stop working... The problem was that Gnome back to work on Wayland. I restart the screen session with Gnome on XOrg and the slash "/" key back to work.

Just for improve the information above ;)

Answer 4

Despite it being an old question, maybe my answer would be helpful for future ThinkPad owners using Gnome as a Desktop Environment:

1. Go to settings:
2. Go to keyboard and then "Input Sources" section.
3. Add a new source searching by ThinkPad (which results like "Portuguese")
4. Make this source primary by moving it to up (or removing other sources).

Below is a screenshot of the config panel:

Side note: Maybe you should configure alternative keyboard layouts before (see Use alternative keyboard layouts section): https://help.gnome.org/users/gnome-help/stable/keyboard-layouts.html.en

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.input-sources show-all-sources true

P.S.: I tried to configure layout by using localectl set-keymap br-thinkpad (fedora doc) but couldn't work at all.

Answer 5

I have the same Lenovo notebook with the BR ABNT keyboard. I was able to fix the slash key for text terminals.

1. Go to /usr/share/kbd/keymaps/i386/qwerty.

2. Copy the original map br-abnt2.map.gz to a temp directory.

3. Decompress the file and rename it to br-thinkpad.map (example, you can use any name you like).

4. Edit the file br-thinkpad.map with a text editor.

5. Insert the following line:

   keycode  97 = slash question degree
   

   I inserted the line respecting the order of the other keycodes in the file.

6. Save the file.

7. Compress the file with gzip br-thinkpad.map.

8. Copy the compressed file to /usr/share/kbd/keymaps/i386/qwerty.

9. Test the file with the command loadkeys br-thinkpad.

10. To make the change permanent edit /etc/sysconfig/keyboard, changing the value of KEYTABLE to br-thinkpad.map.gz.