bionic (8) install-keymap.8.gz

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.

                                                                                               INSTALL-KEYMAP(8)