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============
INSTALLATION
============
Run "make build" and "make install". The first of these commands will
build the package and the second command will install the necessary
data in /usr/local and /etc.
This command will install in /etc/console-setup/ckb keyboard
definitions that are more or less identical to the keyboard
definitions used by X Window. If your system uses X Window there are
very good chances that there are already keyboard definitions in
/etc/X11/xkb or /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xkb. In that case you can remove
/etc/console-setup/ckb in order to use the data proveded by X Window
and to have identical keyboard configuration on the console and in X
Window.
If you want to install the files in different places you can use a
command like this one:
make etcdir=my_package/etc prefix=my_package/usr install
This command will install the configuration files in the directory
my_package/etc and the other files under the hierarchy my_package/usr.
In order to uninstall the package use the comand "make uninstall".
===========
BASIC USAGE
===========
The easiest way to setup the console is to use the "setupcon" program.
In most cases you will invoke it without arguments - it will read its
configuration from ~/.console-setup or /etc/default/console-setup.
The command "make install" installs the example configuration file
"config" as /etc/default/console-setup. You can edit it to suit your
needs.
In general, the configuration has two parts - font and keyboard. The
font configuration is straightforward, read README.fonts for more
details.
The keyboard configuration consists of giving values to four variables
- XKBMODEL, XKBLAYOUT, XKBVARIANT and XKBOPTIONS. These variables
have the same meaning as the XkbModel, XkbLayout, XkbVariant and
XkbOptions options in the fail /etc/X11/xorg.conf and also the same
meaning as the parameters of the options -model, -layout, -variant and
-options of the setxkbmap utility. For detailed instructions read
"The XKB Configuration Guide" by Kamil Toman and Ivan U. Pascal:
http://www.xfree86.org/current/XKB-Config.html
Other possible readings are:
http://pascal.tsu.ru/en/xkb/
http://www.charvolant.org/~doug/xkb/
If you do not want to read these, here are two examples:
# This will give you the standard US QWERTY layout (us), where the
# menu-key acts as Compose-key (compose:menu) and the CapsLock will be
# third Control key (ctrl:nocaps).
XKBMODEL=pc105
XKBLAYOUT=us
XKBVARIANT=
XKBOPTIONS=compose:menu,ctrl:nocaps
# In this configuration the Control+Shift combination will toggle
# (grp:ctrl_shift_toggle) between French keyboard (fr) without dead
# keys (nodeadkeys) and British (gb) "Dvorak" (dvorak) keyboard. The
# right Win-key will be Compose-key (compose:rwin) and the right
# Alt-key will be AltGr (lv3:lalt_switch).
XKBMODEL=pc105
XKBLAYOUT=fr,gb
XKBVARIANT=nodeadkeys,dvorak
XKBOPTIONS=grp:ctrl_shift_toggle,compose:rwin,lv3:ralt_switch
==========================
ALTERNATIVE CONFIGURATIONS
==========================
If you have to switch often between different encodings, keyboards or
languages you can prepare several alternative configuration files for
setupcon. Suppose that most of the time you use Greek language, Greek
keyboard and UTF-8 encoding, but sometimes you need to type in German
and ISO-8859-15 encoding. Create the main configuration file
/etc/default/console-setup for Greek:
ACTIVE_CONSOLES="/dev/tty[1-6]"
CHARMAP=UTF-8
CODESET=Greek
FONTFACE=VGA
FONTSIZE=16
XKBMODEL=pc105
XKBLAYOUT=us,gr
XKBVARIANT=
# The right Alt toggles between Latin and Greek
# The option grp_led:scroll is ignored
XKBOPTIONS=grp:toggle,grp_led:scroll
Create also a second file /etc/default/console-setup.german for German:
ACTIVE_CONSOLES="/dev/tty[1-6]"
CHARMAP=ISO-8859-15
CODESET=Lat15
FONTFACE=VGA
FONTSIZE=16
XKBMODEL=pc105
XKBLAYOUT=de
XKBVARIANT=
# The right Alt functions as AltGr
XKBOPTIONS=lv3:ralt_switch
Then use the command "setupcon" to configure Greek console and the
command "setupcon german" to configure German console. (By the way,
when you change the working encoding as in this example, you will have
to change also the locale.)
If you don't want to exploit superuser priviledges, use the files
~/.console-setup and ~/.console-setup.german instead of
/etc/default/console-setup and /etc/default/console-setup.german.
==============
ADVANCED USAGE
==============
You may want to make your system automatically configure the console.
In this case make sure that the "setupcon" program is invoked during
the system bootup. You may want to use as example the startup script
of Debian - debian/console-setup.console-setup.init.
If you want to configure the console too early it may happen that the
/usr file system is not yet mounted. In order to overcome this
obstacle make sure that "setupcon" is installed in /bin and not in
/usr/local/bin or /usr/bin. In addition use the command
setupcon --save
This command will put in the directory /etc/console-setup all data
(font, ACM and keyboard map) relevant to your configuration. Notice
that the following utilities are still necessary: "setfont" or
"consolechars", "kbd_mode" and "loadkeys". Depending of your
distribution they may be installed in /bin (in which case you can have
early console setup), or all or some of them may be in /usr/bin (in
which case they will be unavailable before /usr is mounted).
Sometimes only the keyboard part of the configuration is possible
before the /usr file system becomes available. In this case you can
setup the console in two passes. First, use the command
setupcon -k
as early as possible to setup the keyboard (the early keyboard setup
may be essential if for example fsck fails). Next wait until /usr is
mounted and use the command
setupcon -f
to configure the font.
=======
CKBCOMP
=======
The "ckbcomp" utility is used to generate keyboard map that the kernel
(and the "loadkeys" utility) understands. It accepts more or less the
same arguments as the setxkbmap utility:
ckbcomp [args] [<layout> [<variant> [<option> ... ]]]
Where legal args are:
-?,-help Print this message
-charmap <name> Specifies the encoding to use
-I<dir> Add <dir> to list of directories to be used
-keycodes <name> Specifies keycodes component name
-symbols <name> Specifies symbols component name
-rules <name> Name of rules file to use
-model <name> Specifies model used to choose component names
-layout <name> Specifies layout used to choose component names
-variant <name> Specifies layout variant used to choose component names
-v[erbose] [<lvl>] Sets verbosity (1..10). Higher values yield
more messages
-option <name> Adds an option used to choose component names
On its standard output "ckbcomp" dumps the generated keyboard
definition. The most important difference between the arguments of
"setxkbmap" and the arguments of "ckbcomp" is that ckbcomp requires an
additional parameter -charmap when non-Unicode map is wanted. Without
-charmap "ckbcomp" will generate Unicode keyboard. Look at the
example configuration file for setupcon to see the supported values
for -charmap.
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