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)