Cannot set keyboard using raspi-config

Question

When I plug a USB keyboard into my Raspbian (buster) pi 3B+, and I try to use the pipe key | I get a tilda ~ instead. This is consistent across a bunch of keyboards that work well in other computers.

I see in raspi-config under "Localisation Options" I can "Change Keyboard Layout". There's a long list, so I pick something generic like "Logitech" and then it asks me to configure the "Keyboard layout". Here it presents a long list of options in Cyrillic and Greek and non-English languages but nothing that looks appropriate for USA/English, or even anything that looks Western-European. Even under something plausibly simple like "Frans" I see a huge list of choices, again with lots of Cyrillic and Greek that all look wrong, and make me worried my keyboard will become completely useless if I select one.

To be as clear as I can about version I'm running:

$ uname -a
Linux leopi6 4.19.66-v7+ #1253 SMP Thu Aug 15 11:49:46 BST 2019 armv7l GNU/Linux

$ cat /etc/os-release 
PRETTY_NAME="Raspbian GNU/Linux 10 (buster)"
NAME="Raspbian GNU/Linux"
VERSION_ID="10"
VERSION="10 (buster)"
VERSION_CODENAME=buster
ID=raspbian
ID_LIKE=debian
HOME_URL="http://www.raspbian.org/"
SUPPORT_URL="http://www.raspbian.org/RaspbianForums"
BUG_REPORT_URL="http://www.raspbian.org/RaspbianBugs"

Answer 1

Here it presents a long list of options in Cyrillic and Greek and non-English languages but nothing that looks appropriate for USA/English, or even anything that looks Western-European. Even under something plausibly simple like "Frans" I see a huge list of choices, again with lots of Cyrillic and Greek that all look wrong

I have seen this screen and it is clearly not working properly.

Edit /etc/default/keyboard and set:

XKBMODEL="pc101"
XKBLAYOUT="us"

The second one is what's most important; it was probably (gb). Then reboot. This should be permanent and affect both console and GUI mode.

See also man 5 keyboard for an explanation of where to find available options, etc.