Ubuntu – Changing TTY keyboard layout on a server

Ok, yet another try, this one will do the trick I hope... ;)

Credits are due to reverendj1, who described a way of assigning a Custom key to toggle keyboard layout, using setxkbmap, which featured in the workaround alluded to in Edit 2 of my previous answer...

Here is the slightly more involved way, but will give you more flexibility for the key combination. First, copy and paste this script I wrote and name it something like kb_toggle.sh. Make sure to edit LANG1 and LANG2 to be the keyboard layout codes you need.

#!/bin/bash

LANG1="us"
LANG2="de"
CURRENT_LANG=$(setxkbmap -query | tail -n 1 | cut -f6 -d ' ')
if [ "$CURRENT_LANG" = $LANG1 ]; then
    setxkbmap $LANG2
else
    setxkbmap $LANG1
fi

make the file by right-clicking on it -> "Properties" -> "Permissions" tab, then select "Allow executing file as program.

Now, open "System Settings" -> "Keyboard" -> "Shortcuts" tab and select "Custom Shortcuts". Click the + button on the bottom and name the shortcut "Keyboard Toggle" or whatever you want, really. Then give the full path to the script you made earlier in the command box. Hit Apply. Click where it says "Disabled" then you can set the shortcut to whatever you want by clicking your key combination!

I think you'd need to change "de" to "ir".

Again, good luck!

Edit

You may even get away with a one-liner, if you prefer:

setxkbmap us,ir -option "grp:alt_shift_toggle"

Now you can switch by pressing alt+shift

See also http://wiki.lxde.org/en/Change_keyboard_layouts and http://www.x.org/releases/X11R7.7/doc/man/man1/setxkbmap.1.xhtml

Edit 2

Depending on how you decide to achieve your goal, you may want to include lv3:ralt_alt in your command, resulting in

setxkbmap us,ir -option "lv3:ralt_alt,grp:alt_shift_toggle"

See man xkeyboard-config | grep lv3 for details:

lv3:ralt_alt

Right Alt key never chooses 3rd level

   xkeyboard-config  provides  the  description files for the X Keyboard Extension (XKB). The configuration options below are
   usually applied with setxkbmap(1).

Update 2017-04-13: This seems to have changed in recent Ubuntu versions and running sudo apt-get install console-common will try to remove other packages. So, for recent Ubuntu versions, use this instead (Tested in 17.04):

sudo dpkg-reconfigure keyboard-configuration

The simplest way would indeed be as @steeldriver suggested to open a terminal and run this command:

sudo apt-get install console-common

That will install the console-common package and in the process allow you to chose your console layout. If that is already installed, use this to bring up the same wizard and set the layout:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure console-data

Tested on 13.10, and taken from here.