Numlock ON when starting X

[Andrew]

On Tue, 2004-11-30 at 20:49, Longman, Bill wrote:
> > This is probably more a generic linux question.
> > 
> > When my system boots, neither in the virtual consoles, nor in X the 
> > numlock key is activated.
> > 
> > I would like to change this, such that the numlock is by 
> > default on in 
> > the virtual consoles and X (including the graphical login 
> > screen kdm/gdm ?)
> > 
> > Does anyone know where to change this ?
> 
> Geert, my Gentoo box has a numlock init script. It calls "setleds". The
> "setleds" man page also references "loadkeys". You might be able to find
> something along these lines.

These are good pointers!

setleds:

>From the manual:
*****************************
DESCRIPTION
       Setleds  reports and changes the led flag settings of a VT
 (namely Num-Lock, CapsLock and ScrollLock).  Without arguments, setleds
 prints  the current  settings.   With  arguments,  it  sets or clears
 the indicated flags (and leaves the others unchanged). The settings
 before and  after the change are reported if the -v flag is given.

<<<SNIP>>>

One  might  use  setleds  in  /etc/rc to define the initial and default 
state of NumLock, e.g. by

            INITTY=/dev/tty[1-8]
            for tty in $INITTY; do
                 setleds -D +num < $tty
            done

*****************************
I guess the second paragraph mean to put these line somewhere in
/etc/rc*. I guess </etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit> or <etc/rc.d/rc.local> is the
appropriate place(?). This one only work within virtual terminals (VTx)




loadkeys:

>From the manual:
*****************************
DESCRIPTION
       The program loadkeys reads the file or files specified by 
filename.... Its main purpose is to load the kernel keymap for the
console.

<<<SNIP>>>

FILES
       /lib/kbd/keymaps
              default directory for keymaps

       /usr/src/linux/drivers/char/defkeymap.map
              default kernel keymap
******************************
I would put my money on setleds's way...
Further investigations (read: googleing) lead me to this:

http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/faq.xml#numlock
http://linux.editme.com/how-to-get-num-lock-to-default-to-on
..but this page beat them all fare&square:
http://www.linuxgazette.com/node/395

As I am writing this, I notice the LED is OFF but the keypad do print
numbers but when the LED is ON the keypad act like arrows....Weirdo!

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