Add numlockx and numlock script to the book

[Fernando de Oliveira]

Both are used to turn on numlock automatically.

[bdubbs@…]

Is this really necessary? I believe that most of the time the bootup state of the numlock key can be set in the bios.

I found numlockx and it's a simple CMMI for a single 250 line c program.

The numlock for standard tty can also be set with:

for tty in /dev/tty{1..6}; do /usr/bin/setleds -D +num < "$tty"; done

The X tty is normally 7 (depends on inittab) so turning on 7 would probably work for that.

[Fernando de Oliveira]

Replying to bdubbs@…:

I hope this is to be replied here, and not in dev.

Is this really necessary? I believe that most of the time the bootup state of the numlock key can be set in the bios.

I have machines where it cannot be set in bios.

I found numlockx and it's a simple CMMI for a single 250 line c program.

Yes.

The numlock for standard tty can also be set with:

for tty in /dev/tty{1..6}; do /usr/bin/setleds -D +num < "$tty"; done

Thanks for that! I had come across it some years ago, but did not know it was for tty. After some thought I have just created a boot script for this, linked to runlevels 3 4 5, and works. Used tty{1..7}.

The X tty is normally 7 (depends on inittab) so turning on 7 would probably work for that.

The machine does not start X or wm session using inittab, perhaps the reason for not working for it. Have no idea why, but X is in different tty, depending on the machine.

For the script, I find it might be educational for some users (was for me) and useful. It could be described in the numlockx page.

I do not mind if you decide against including in the book, but numlockx is useful (in my particular case, essential), and is mentioned in the book as an external link and found in most distributions - I know what you think about distributions. :-)

[bdubbs@…]

X uses the first available tty. Generally inittab uses the first six tty devices and then X takes the 7th.

This is too simple a program to add to the overhead of the book.

[bdubbs@…]

Milestone current deleted