From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.3) Gecko/20030313 Description of problem: I can't configure Red Hat linux to start with numlock enabled. How reproducible: Always Additional info: With numlock disabled by default, I get two sets of arrow keys - the arrow arrow keys, and the number/arrow arrow keys.
Most bioses allow you to select whether the machine should boot with numlock on or off. I don't want to clutter the UI with items like this.
My BIOS is set to start my machine with the numlock on. Numlock gets turned off before it reaches the init.d scripts. It would be nice if the OS honoured the BIOS setting. Shall I refile?
I believe that the kernel is resetting the Numlock setting. I would recommend that you file a new bug against the kernel. My guess is that the kernel people will resist changing the current behavior. Closing as 'notabug' for redhat-config-keyboard. Thanks for your report.
I filed a kernel bug (bug 91765). It is a kernel issue, but it raises a bigger point: "..In addition it gets more complicated once people start hotplugging USB keyboards.." -- Alan Cox I can't think of a better place that in redhat-config-keyboard, to allow users to configure how their keyboard is setup. If a user attaches a USB keyboard to the system, shouldn't the keyboard start with user-predefined settings?
This actually is an issue for me as well. I own a Gateway G6-350, and as well as some several other machines (some older boxes like the G6). One problem seems to be that some of these older BIOS versions do not offer the ability to turn off a NUMLOCK switch in the BIOS. Thus, when I boot up with my IBM Model "M" keyboard (Part number 1395217, made I think on 04-04-90), then it seems have the keyboard in "NUMLOCK On" mode. Thus I try to type "linux rescue vga=792", and instead of getting linux, I get "34N5X"! The simple solution (in my view) for this would be to have the install CD go and turn numlock off in its initialization procedure, so that when the "Linux:" boot prompt from the CD-ROM appears, you can type "linux" and not "34n5x". Then there could be a kernel parameter (such as "NUMLOCK={ON|OFF}" to use once installed on the hard drive. I do not know if this is an issue strictly with RedHat (as that is the only real Linux distribution I use), but it maybe true of SuSE or others too, not sure. Thanks, Stuart Beverly Hills, CA
Sorry, redhat-config-keyboard is for selecting the geographic keymap. That's all. I'm not going to expand the scope of the tool beyond that. Keep in mind that the redhat-config-keyboard interface is also used by anaconda during the initial system install. It just doesn't make sense to ask users anything other than what type of keyboard they have (U.S., French, German, etc.)
You can easilly work this around by adding something like INITTY=/dev/tty[1-8] for tty in $INITTY; do setleds -D +num < $tty done to eg. /etc/rc.sysinit or create upstart job.