[SOLVED] Re: console keymap and console-setup

[Tyler Smith <tyler.smith@mail.mcgill.ca>]

On 2007-05-31, Tyler Smith <tyler.smith@mail.mcgill.ca> wrote:
> On 2007-05-31, Florian Kulzer <florian.kulzer+debian@icfo.es> wrote:
>>
>> I think that in the end console-setup uses the definitions in
>> /etc/default/console-setup, which have a syntax similar to the keyboard
>> section in xorg.conf, e.g.
>>
>> XKBMODEL=""
>> XKBLAYOUT="es"
>> XKBVARIANT="nodeadkeys"
>> XKBOPTIONS="lv3:ralt_switch"
>>
>> Can you achieve your custom keyboard layout like that? (The above works
>> for me, but I never tried any fancy stuff with console-setup's keyboard
>> layouts.)
>>
>
> The documentation for console-setup is very sketchy, and basically
> just says use the same options you use for your xorg.conf. Well, I've
> done that, and it still doesn't work. This is very frustrating.
>
> Thanks for your suggestions though!
>
> Tyler
>

Ok, I've got what I needed for the console sorted out. I couldn't
figure out the xorg-like options for console-setup. You'd think that
somewhere in the many man pages on xorg and console-setup and kbd and
keyboard and ... someone might have thought to explain what the
options actually do, beyond just listing what they are! It's all fine
and well to tell me how to control my keyboard groups, and how to get
to level 3, but I have no idea why I'd want to do either. At least
Wikipedia could tell me what a dead key was.

Anyways, I ended up purging console-setup. The only thing I liked
about it was the terminus font, and that was easy enough to manage on
my own, with a consolechars command added to .bash_profile. I put my
custom keymap somewhere, I'll probably never find it again, but I
changed the keymap.sh script to point to it, so I don't need to know.
Now I get my keymap loaded automatically during boot, and the font is
switched when I log on, and everything is just peachy. The keymap I'm
using is perfect for emacs, but it does alter the behaviour of a few
keys (arrows and page_{up|down}) when I use aptitude, mutt, and slrn,
but alternatives are available.

I have one more keyboard issue, but it's with xterm, so I'll leave
that until tomorrow.

Thanks for all the tips!

Tyler