* Alan Mackenzie (acm@muc.de) [18.07.08 23:00]:
> Hi, Gentoo,
> 
Hi,

> I'm having a great time installing Gentoo, and everything's going
> swimmingly, including having compiled a kernel, got networking working, I
> can use a USB stick, .....
> 
fine,

> Except I've hit a brick wall.  I want to set up my console keyboard, so I
> go to edit /etc/conf.d/keymaps, as described in the "x86 Handbook".
> 
Maybe you have just what the Germans call "Ein Brett vorm Kopf"

> That file says, after a temporary previous edit:
> 
> #########################################################################
> # Use KEYMAP to specify the default console keymap.  There is a complete tree
> # of keymaps in /usr/share/keymaps to choose from.
> 
> KEYMAP="uk"
> #########################################################################
> 
> This is aggravatingly vague.  I cannot find anything to tell me _HOW_ to
> "Use KEYMAP to specify ...".  Somehow, my current setting of "uk" seems
> to find and load an appropriate keymap, perhaps
> /usr/share/keymaps/i386/qwerty/uk.map.gz.
> 
KEYMAP is just a env var which holds the arguments for loadkeys. And for 
sure it finds this keymap. And this is by far not vague. See below.

If you need uk keyboard layout: your done :-)

> So the question is how do I get the system to load up my own special
> keymap, currently called boottime.keymap.gz on my Debian system?  Where
> must I write this file so that it gets loaded?  Where do I find the
> documentation telling where to write this file?
> 
> I've delved into /etc/init.d/keymaps (a "runscript" shell), but it
> appears merely to use ${KEYMAP}.  I cannot see how this script manages to
> find a filename out of "uk".  Presumably the interpreter /sbin/runscript
> runs the find command, somehow.  But I can't find any documentation for
> runscript.
> 

Keymaps are loaded with loadkeys. man loadkeys gives the glory details.
(there is also a hint how to set this as kernel keymap ;-))

It searches in /usr/share/keymaps for the string.

As you may have noticed all keymaps differ before the .map.gz. So it 
should go smoothly, if you put your keymap in any folder, an appropiate 
for sanity, and rename it to something unique, a la my-own-nifty.map.gz. 

Test it with 
# loadkeys my-own-nifty 

> So I'm stymied.  It's a real jar after so much of the installation has
> gone so smoothly, with otherwise excellent documentation, well above
> average for a Linux distro.
> 
> How do I set my keyboard layout?
> 

loadkeys

> Thanks in advance for the help!
> 
HTH

Sebastian

-- 
 " Religion ist das Opium des Volkes. "      Karl Marx

 SEB@STI@N GÜNTHER         mailto:samson@guenther-roetgen.de