Keyboard stopped working after customizing

[jf-moniquelevi]

Laptop Lenovo R61 using Gnome.
I upgraded a few days ago from 13.04 to 14.04; went real well (compared to the old days)
The custom keyboard I had set-up was gone, reverted to standard US.
I edited the usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/us, as I did before.
Didn't change.
Deleted var/lib/xkb/*.xkm
No change
Then I ran a dpkg command ... can't remember which !

Now, when I boot, the keyboard is completely dead; cannot even enter the password.
If I get the keyboard layout map it has question marks in all keys.
Tried to boot a Guest session, same thing.
I only can boot in recovery mode, on command line, keyboard works fine.

Right now I am using a 12.04 USB stick to boot and type this message !!!

I am on a trip, and have no other machine.

Help would be appreciated a lot.

J.F.

[schragge]

Can you use onscreen keyboard to enter password and login? It should be among accessibility features (small man-with-spread-out-arms icon).

[jf-moniquelevi]

Can you use onscreen keyboard to enter password and login? It should be among accessibility features (small man-with-spread-out-arms icon).

Thanks

Tried that: the onscreen keyboard: it has "?" on each key and something like "X keyboard not found, trying again..." on the space bar.

However, I can get to a CLI using GRUB advanced option >> recovery.

My feeling is that I have to reinstall the keyboard package, not sure how to.
I tried sudo apt-get install --reinstall xserver-xorg-input-all from the GRUB CLI; it didn't do anything.

If I were home I would use an external KB, but it is 400 mi away !!!

[schragge]

Reinstall package xkb-data from recovery console:

apt-get --reinstall install xkb-data

[jf-moniquelevi]

Reinstall package xkb-data from recovery console:

apt-get --reinstall install xkb-data

Many thanks !!! Looks like it is what I am looking for. Will try this tomorrow, gettig late here.

[jf-moniquelevi]

Belated thanks and Happy New Year !!!
It worked !

The only snag was getting the file system mounted in R/W. When you boot in recovery, the fs is mounted "read only". Go to the option "Fix package" and it remounts the fs in R/W then schragge's ​ tip worked like a charm !!!