Bug#624327: marked as done ("dpkg-reconfigure keyboard-configuration" silently dies)
On Thu, Apr 28, 2011 at 07:32:11AM +0200, Harald Dunkel wrote:
>
> 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 am not sure this is a special case. Yes, it makes no sense to
manually install keyboard-configuration on a headless machine but there
can be some other reasons that cause keyboard-configuration to be
automatically installed.
It is not difficult to change the configure script to always ask the
questions (regardless of whether there is a keyboard or not). If the
developers at debian-boot@lists.debian.org think this is desirable I can
make the required changes.
> > 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
Dpkg-reconfigure is not meant to handle all possible configurations of a
package. In non-standard situations the user always has to configure
the package manually. But I believe the solutions I proposed are even
easier than running dpkg-reconfigure on all machines. Method 4 allows
you to use dpkg-reconfigure if you wish -- you can run dpkg-reconfigure
on any machine with a keyboard and copy its /etc/default/keyboard to all
machines with no keyboard (this can be one of the computers connected to
the KVM switch or, if you wish, this can be even your local computer
with possibly different version of keyboard-configuration).
> actually I don't see why the postinst scripts shouldn't do their job.
> [...]
> I don't know the internals of the postinst script that much, but it
> seems that this temporary hardware dependency can be dropped.
Yes, it is easy to drop this dependency and if the members of
debian-boot@lists.d.o suggest, I will make the required changes. I
suppose there is no way to differentiate between a headless machine and
a machine that is only temporarily without a keyboard. Thats why it
seems undesirable to ask keyboard questions on computers with no
keyboard.
> 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.
Isn't it easier to scp /etc/default/keyboard that to run
dpkg-reconfigure on each machine and answer many times the same
questions?
Anton Zinoviev
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