I cannot type "|" in Ubuntu on VirtualBox

Question

I also cannot press "\" (this is not important right now)

Answer 1

For console-only instances, e.g. servers, install the console-data package.

sudo apt-get install console-data

Set up the input language.

sudo dpkg-reconfigure console-data  

When the configuration dialog is displayed, choose to select a keymap from the "arch list". The most common keyboard layout is "qwerty" (look at the first row of letters in your keyboard), so choose this unless you have something different.

Next, select a keyboard layout. The English language keyboard contains the | and \ characters that are currently missing.

Press OK and you're done. Reboot the guest OS with sudo reboot to use your new keyboard layout.