numlock at boot

[Paul Morgan]

On Thu, 2003-10-02 at 14:10, Martin Stricker wrote:
> I consider Paul Morgan's proposal as being The Right Way To Do It(TM).
> ;-))) This should be bugzilla'ed as RFE! And if you look in the file
> manager of your choice, you'll find a directory /etc/sysconfig with some
> really useful files in all more recent versions of Red Hat Linux.

Thanks for the comments. I've implemented my suggestion, and it works
"mostly". More specifically, it works for the logon greeter, for xterms
and tty's, and when su'ing from one user to another or from one user to
root. It only doesn't work when su'ing from root to a regular user. 

It's a crude first effort that needs improving, but here goes:

in /etc/sysconfig/keyboard add an optional line
NUMLOCK=on|off|bios

at logon, su, etc, the system will read ~/.keyboard and override the
global /etc/sysconfig/keyboard value if different. This allows the user
to specify their own preference.

Here are the changes:

compile numlockx and put it in /usr/bin/



cat > /etc/profile.d/keyboard.sh << EOF
# set numlock according to user pref
function set_numlock {
    /usr/bin/tty | /bin/grep -q /dev/tty
    if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then
	if [ $1 = "on" ]; then
            /usr/bin/setleds +num
	else
	    /usr/bin/setleds -num
	fi
    else
        /usr/bin/numlockx $1 > /dev/null 2>&1
    fi
}

. /etc/sysconfig/keyboard
test -f ~/.keyboard && . ~/.keyboard
case ${NUMLOCK} in
    "on" )
         set_numlock on ;;
    "bios" )
        # implement later
        set_numlock off
	;;
    * )
        set_numlock off ;;
esac
EOF

I started to port the bash script to csh/tcsh but need to research how
to efficiently source the variables, so I'll look at that part later.
There needs to be a keyboard.csh version for csh users. It doesn't apply
to bash users.



Now vi /etc/X11/xdm/Xsetup_0 and add a line immediately below this one:
/usr/X11R6/bin/xsetroot -solid "#5477A0"

. /etc/profile.d/keyboard.sh

Xsetup_0 is called to set up the logon greeter, so the numlock setting
will apply here, too.



Next add the following lines to /etc/rc.sysinit right below the loadkeys
section but before #set the hostname:


# set numlock
function set_numlock {
    TTY=`grep mingetty /etc/inittab | cut -d: -f1`
    for tty in $TTY; do
        if [ $1 == "on" ]; then
            setleds -D +num < /dev/tty${tty}
	else
            setleds -D -num < /dev/tty${tty}
	fi
    done
}

case ${NUMLOCK} in
    "on" )
        set_numlock on ;;
    "bios" )
        # implement later
	set_numlock off
	;;
    * )
        set_numlock off ;;
esac

This part handles the virtual consoles.


Note that I don't have a clue how to read the bios settings, so somebody
is welcome to fill in the "implement later" portion. For now it's the
same as "off". I thought about adding a "last" option, but it looks more
involved than it's worth at the moment. The tty's and X would have to
trap the key events and save to a dot file.

Hope this helps.
-paul