Man Linux: Main Page and Category List

NAME

       install-keymap  —  expand  a  given  keymap and install it as boot-time
       keymap

SYNOPSIS

       install-keymap [keymap-name | NONE | KERNEL]

DESCRIPTION

       install-keymap usually takes a keymap-name as argument.   The  file  is
       passed  to loadkeys for loading, so that valid values for this argument
       are the same  than  that  of  arguments  to  loadkeys.   install-keymap
       expands  include-like  statements  in that file, and puts the result in
       /etc/console/boottime.kmap.gz, which will be loaded into the kernel  at
       boot-time.

       One  may  also  specify  KERNEL  instead  of  a  keymap  name,  causing
       /etc/console/boottime.kmap.gz     to be removed, making  sure  that  no
       custom  keymap will replace the kernel’s builtin keymap at next reboot.

       An argument of NONE tells the command to do nothing.  It can be used by
       caller  scripts  to  avoid  handling  this  special case and needlessly
       duplicate code.

       The purpose of this processing is to solve an annoying  problem,  of  2
       apparently  conflicting  issues.  The first one is an important goal of
       keymap management in Debian, namely ensuring that whenever the user  or
       admin is expected to use the keyboard, the keymap selected as boot-time
       keymap is in use; this means the keymap has to be loaded before a shell
       is  ever  proposed,  which means very early in the booting process, and
       especially    before    all    local    filesystems     are     mounted
       (/etc/rcS.d/S10checkroot.sh can spawn sulogin).

       The  second  issue  is  that  for  flexibility  we  allow  that /usr or
       /usr/share   may   live   on   their   own   partition(s),   and   thus
       /usr/share/keymaps,  where  keymap files live, may not be available for
       reading at the time we need a keymap file.  And no, we won’t put 1Mb of
       keymaps in the root partition just for this.

       And  the  problem  is,  most keymap files are not self-contained, so it
       does not help to just copy the selected file into the  root  partition.
       The  best known solution so far is to expand the keymap file so that it
       becomes self-contained, and put it in the root partition.  That’s  what
       this tool does.

FILES

       /etc/console/boottime.kmap.gz

       Where the boot-time keymap is stored

SEE ALSO

       loadkeys (8).

AUTHOR

       This   program   and   manual   page   were   written  by  Yann  Dirson
       dirson@debian.org for the Debian GNU/Linux system, but as it should not
       include any Debian-specific code, it may be used by others.