Bug#280122: debian-installer: wrong keyboard with krnl2.6 + french + USB

[Frans Pop <aragorn@tiscali.nl>]

severity 280122 normal
retitle 280122 Selection of USB-kbds needs rewrite; dialogs misleading
submitter 280122 aragorn@tiscali.nl
thanks

On Sunday 07 November 2004 13:22, Fabrice LORRAIN wrote:
> Booting with linux26 + french language + France gives the Macintosh USB
> keyboard menu, which is wrong.
>
> Booting with the 2.4 kernel or linux26 + english + UK + British English
> doesn't show this problem.

This original problem has been fixed in version 1.07 of kbd-chooser by 
offering the keymaps for AT keyboards instead of the keymaps for USB/Mac 
keyboards on i386 and powerpc (prep and chrp).
This solution is a temporary hack as there is no time before RC2 to do a 
proper rewrite.
It is known that other arches (like IA64) have the same problem, but it 
has been decided to limit the fix to i386 and powerpc to limit the risk 
of breaking things.

There are several open issues that should be dealt with post RC2:
- As now AT keymaps are also offered for USB keyboards, the current titles
  for the arch and keymap selection dialogs for AT can be confusing.
- The usb-mac-* keymaps are inconsistent: the us/uk keymaps are actually
  AT keymaps (at least for i386 and powerpc), while the fr/be keymaps are
  Mac keymaps.
- During the tests for this patch it was discovered that the real
  identification of an usb-keyboard in /proc/bus/usb/devices is:
  Cls=03(HID  ) Sub=01 Prot=01
  The driver used can be both 'usbkbd' and 'usbhid'. This means the two
  currently separate detection tests in usb-kbd.c can be integrated.

See also the remarks in usb-kdb.c itself.

(I'm setting myself as submitter of this bug to better keep track of these 
remaining issues.)