Vanishing GBP character from Keyboard.

[john_ker]

This fault appeared suddenly. With key+shift only "3" prints.
My OS is Suse10.2 but I have also WindowsXP and other versions of Suse installed for tinkering with. Since other installations print normally it must be something to do with the Suse10.2 installation. I have had a look at the keyboard module using Yast2 but I didn't see anything that meant anything to me as a means of refreshing the original installation. My books do not make any reference to keyboard mapping or the like so I am stuck. Is there anyone , please, who can give me a line on investigating the problem?
With thanks.
John ker.

[Oxygen]

Out of interest, you haven't happened to change font have you? Can you manually insert the character in Open Office?

[john_ker]

I have not changed font, not knowingly anyway.
I opened OpenOffice word processor and key+shift still prints "3".
The pound sterling character is not among the "special characters".
I use Latex and "\pound" prints the character.

Thanks for your interest.

[devils casper]

open terminal and execute 'setxkbmap us'.

[john_ker]

I do indeed seem to have a problem with the keyboard configuration it seems.
I was unfamiliar with "setxkbmap us" and did a bit of googling, looked at the man page and checked the application was on my computer. I tried it out on my "practice" installation and sure enough the layout changed to North American and "gb" changed it back again. However, with my "operational" installation I got the following error message both as user and root which seemed to indicate a problem to which I don't really understand the question, never mind the answer. So, I am still no further forward - although I do know a little more than I did thanks to the help I've had.

john@jonsbox:~> setxkbmap gb
Couldn't interpret _XKB_RULES_NAMES property
Use defaults: rules - 'xorg' model - 'pc101' layout - 'us'
Couldn't find rules file (xorg)

I got the same message using "us"

[john_ker]

It is all very educational investigating these problems but it is quick just to reinstall on an alternative partition especially if you have all data files backed-up and ready to go. Problem solved.

When you find yourself in a hole: stop digging.