Re: Bug#624327: marked as done ("dpkg-reconfigure keyboard-configuration" silently dies)
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On 04/27/11 20:51, Debian Bug Tracking System wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 27, 2011 at 03:24:07PM +0200, Harald Dunkel wrote:
>> > Trying to configure several servers over network I noticed that
>> > "dpkg-reconfigure keyboard-configuration" silently dies, if no keyboard
>> > is attached to the PC.
> I suppose you don't mean that dpkg-reconfigure dies (i.e. exits with
> error) but that it simply exits without asking any questions. This is
> the intended behaviour - there is no point to configure a keyboard if
> there is no keyboard.
There is no point to install the keyboard-configuration package for a
machine without keyboard, either, so we can ignore this special case.
The machines _do_ have a keyboard; its just not attached all the time.
>
> I can suggest four solutions for your problem:
>
> 1. Buy an active KVM switch. With an active KVM switch all computers
> will see a keyboard.
>
Replacing the KVM as a workaround for a software problem is not
an option right now.
> 2. Do not reconfigure remotely the keyboard. It is safer when a local
> operator does this because it is possible to test that the keyboard
> configuration works as intended.
>
Traveling to the data center in Frankfurt (about 300km) just to configure
the keyboard layout is not an option, either.
> 3. Edit /etc/default/keyboard by hand. You can use scp to copy the same
> file between the machines. This a lot easier than running
> dpkg-reconfigure on each machine.
>
> 4. Run dpkg-reconfigure on the computer that currently sees the keyboard
> from the KVM switch and then copy its /etc/default/keyboard to the other
> machines.
You mean I should avoid running dpkg-reconfigure and configure the
packages manually instead? I can do that for almost all packages, but
actually I don't see why the postinst scripts shouldn't do their job.
For the machines _with_ a local keyboard I could login via ssh and
define a completely arbitrary keyboard mapping using dpkg-reconfigure.
I don't know the internals of the postinst script that much, but it
seems that this temporary hardware dependency can be dropped.
I don't like keyboards with national settings either, but fact is
that some people can type only with their favorite keyboard layout.
Surely this is not a fatal problem, but it would be very nice if we
could find a smart solution for this, instead of just closing this
bug report.
Many thanx
Harri
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