Re: Configuring a US keyboard with umlauts in sid (hal etc?)

[Frank Küster <frank@debian.org>]

Michael Biebl <biebl@debian.org> wrote:

> Frank Küster wrote:
>> Howard Eisenberger <howarde@gmx.net> wrote:
>> 
>>> On 2009-11-25, Kelly Clowers wrote:
>
>>>> In newer versions, you can put stuff like that in /etc/default/console-setup
>>>> or most recently in /etc/default/keyboard  This works on TTYs and X.
>>> I thought the OP said he tried this, but it didn't work. It just
>>> worked for me using XKBOPTIONS in /etc/default/console-setup after
>>> I rebooted.
>> 
>> I tried /etc/default/keyboard.  I'm not sure whether the reason for the
>> failure was that I tried the wrong options, or whether I only restarted
>> X and did not reboot (I don't know whether I rebooted).
>
> I think the config file has a note that you have to restart hal, in order for X
> to pick up the changes.

I forgot to mention that: /etc/init.d/hal restart didn't do the trick.

> The way it (currently) works:
> 1.) configure your keyboard layout in /etc/default/console-setup (or since 1.47,
> in /etc/default/keyboard).
> 2.) hal starts. For input devices it runs the tool that is specified in
> /usr/share/hal/fdi/policy/10osvendor/debian-x11-keymap.fdi, i.e.
> debian-setup-keyboard, which reads the values from
> /etc/default/{keyboard,console-setup} and pokes those values into the hal db.
> 3.) Xorg starts and gets the input properties from hal.

Thank you for the explanation!

> FWIW, Xorg will be dropping the hal dependency and use udev/libudev directly to
> get the input devices. The equivalent for 2.) will be a udev rules file, which
> reads /etc/default/keyboard and store the properties in the udev db.
>
> I thus stongly recommend *not* to manually craft hal fdi files and use
> /etc/default/keyboard instead, as the latter will still be working when Xorg
> switches to udev.

Good to know,

Frank

-- 
Dr. Frank Küster
Debian Developer (TeXLive)
VCD Aschaffenburg-Miltenberg, ADFC Miltenberg
B90/Grüne KV Miltenberg