INSTALL-KEYMAP(8)					      System Manager's Manual						 INSTALL-KEYMAP(8)

NAME

       install-keymap -- expand a given keymap and install it as boot-time keymap

SYNOPSIS

       install-keymap [keymap-name | NONE | KERNEL]

DESCRIPTION

       install-keymap usually takes a keymap-name as argument.	The file is passed to loadkeys for loading, so that valid values for this argument
       are the same than that of arguments to loadkeys.  install-keymap expands include-like statements in that  file,	and  puts  the	result	in
       /etc/console/boottime.kmap.gz, which will be loaded into the kernel at boot-time.

       One  may  also specify KERNEL instead of a keymap name, causing /etc/console/boottime.kmap.gz	 to be removed, making sure that no custom
       keymap will replace the kernel's builtin keymap at next reboot.

       An argument of NONE tells the command to do nothing.  It can be used by caller scripts to avoid handling this special case  and	needlessly
       duplicate code.

       The  purpose of this processing is to solve an annoying problem, of 2 apparently conflicting issues.  The first one is an important goal of
       keymap management in Debian, namely ensuring that whenever the user or admin is expected to use the keyboard, the keymap selected as  boot-
       time  keymap  is  in  use;  this  means	the keymap has to be loaded before a shell is ever proposed, which means very early in the booting
       process, and especially before all local filesystems are mounted (/etc/rcS.d/S10checkroot.sh can spawn sulogin).

       The second issue is that for flexibility we allow that /usr or /usr/share may live on their own partition(s), and thus  /usr/share/keymaps,
       where  keymap  files  live, may not be available for reading at the time we need a keymap file.	And no, we won't put 1Mb of keymaps in the
       root partition just for this.

       And the problem is, most keymap files are not self-contained, so it does not help to just copy the selected file into the  root	partition.
       The  best  known  solution so far is to expand the keymap file so that it becomes self-contained, and put it in the root partition.  That's
       what this tool does.

FILES

       /etc/console/boottime.kmap.gz

       Where the boot-time keymap is stored

SEE ALSO

       loadkeys (8).

AUTHOR

       This program and manual page were written by Yann Dirson dirson@debian.org for the Debian GNU/Linux system, but as it  should  not  include
       any Debian-specific code, it may be used by others.

																 INSTALL-KEYMAP(8)