No pipe symbol in Ubuntu 11.04 running in Windows 7 x64 VirtualBox

For some reason I cannot type a pipe(|) symbol with US keyboard in Ubuntu while I can do it in Windows 7 which also uses US keyboard. Normally I use left-shift with the button next to it to type a pipe symbol, but in Ubuntu it creates < and > with shift (like "shift+," and "shift+." are already doing).


I fixed this for my Dell keyboard by running

sudo dpkg-reconfigure keyboard-configuration

and selecting the most similar keyboard (SK-7100, I think - my actual keyboard is a SK-8165) and guessing sensible options for the other questions (in my case, UK layout, extended-winkeys, no compose).

This was for Ubuntu Server 12.04 LTS 64-bit on VMWare 4.04, host: Windows 7 64-bit.


Try this

  1. Hold down the ALT key
  2. Enter 1,2,4 on the numeric keyboard (you might need to activate it via the Num Locktoggle key)
  3. Release the ALT key

Hope this helps


If you can’t type pipe (|) then change keyboard layout

command is : setxkbmap us

It's work for me