From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Jan 1 20:08:10 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7504416A4CE for ; Thu, 1 Jan 2004 20:08:10 -0800 (PST) Received: from smithers.nildram.co.uk (smithers.nildram.co.uk [195.112.4.54]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6A93B43D1D for ; Thu, 1 Jan 2004 20:08:08 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from nullentropy@lineone.net) Received: from lineone.net (orbital.gotadsl.co.uk [81.6.215.230]) by smithers.nildram.co.uk (Postfix) with ESMTP id DF26825EEE0 for ; Fri, 2 Jan 2004 04:08:06 +0000 (GMT) Message-ID: <3FF4EEA7.4030709@lineone.net> Date: Fri, 02 Jan 2004 04:08:07 +0000 From: Robert Downes User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.6b) Gecko/20031217 X-Accept-Language: en, fr, en-us MIME-Version: 1.0 To: FreeBSD Questions References: <3FF4E439.3040700@lineone.net> In-Reply-To: <3FF4E439.3040700@lineone.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Subject: Re: Dvorak keymap in single user mode X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 02 Jan 2004 04:08:10 -0000 Robert Downes wrote: > I use the US Dvorak keyboard layout, and I find it very difficult to > type in single user mode (when installing world, for example), because > single user mode uses the QWERTY keyboard layout, and does not seem to > pay any attention to kbdmap (I think that's the command name - the one > with the interactive keymap chooser). > > Someone suggested that it's possible to compile the Dvorak layout into > my kernel, but how is this done, and is there an easier way of > changing keyboard layout in single user mode? > Okay, made some progress here. Finally noticed that kbdmap says, quite clearly, *BUGS* The *kbdmap* and *vidfont* utilities work only on a (virtual) console and not with X11. The single user mode is not a virtual console, as virtual consoles are not permitted to run during single user mode. However, the command-line (non-interactive) equivalent is kbdcontrol, and it seems to suffer no such limitation. So, once in single user mode, type mount -a to make sure that /usr is mounted (needed because it contains the keymaps), and then type df to check that the filesystems are mounted. (Actually, you may not need all of them.) If /usr is now showing up, type kbdcontrol -l us.dvorak and you will be reunited with the (cough... superior... cough) Dvorak keyboard layout. This can be done with any of the available layout files in /usr/share/syscons/keymaps However, never happy with a simple option, I wonder if there's an easy (read lazy) option... is it possible to automate this process, so that this command is run by default? (Or is that inadvisable because it requires /usr to be available, and /usr should not necessarily be available in single user mode everytime?) -- Bob