Recover keyboard layout

Question

Using localectl --no-convert layout ..., I changed the layout of my keyboard. Unfortunately, it turned out that I picked the wrong layout which seems to have virtually no key in common with the actual layout of my keyboard. Hence it seems very difficult to change this, while being booted into my system.

Is there a nice way to recover/change my keyboard layout? (Using the arch iso, I was able to mount my root partition, but I don't know how to log into it or change files without actually booting into it.)

I'm running the current version of Arch Linux on a 2015 Retina Macbook Pro.

edit: It's probably relevant that I do not use any desktop manager. So I boot straight into the tty and from there, if needed, launch my xsession with i3 or xfce.

Answer 1

I was able to recover from my situation and here is what I did.

I grabbed the bootable SD card on which I still had the Arch Linux iso and booted into it. There, I created a folder /mnt/arch and mounted my root to it. I also mounted my home partition into /mnt/arch/home, but that was probably not needed. At this point, I used 'arch-chroot /mnt/arch' to change the root partition of my live session to the root partition of my actual Arch Linux install. I then simply edited the /etc/vconsole.conf file and changed the keymap back to 'us'. After that, I could, with the SD card removed, simply reboot my system and had a functioning keyboard layout back.

Note to self: 'mac-us' is NOT the keyboard layout you want to have... and thanks again Linux, for being awesome.