[syslinux] Syslinux keyboard mappings

[Dag Wieers]

Hi,

I finally want to end the fights we have had in the past with keyboard 
mappings. I already curse the person who is responsible for this keyboard 
mess (and even more the persons who could have create a 'detect keyboard' 
kind of functionality in modern PCs :))

But the general problem is this, BIOSes are US qwerty, Belgium uses 
be-latin1 (azerty with lots of custom keys). And to complicate the matter, 
we're often logged on to Citrix and into some sort of remote java gui 
console.

All of these complicate the issue (or at least do not improve it).

Now, somehow I hoped the solution would be fairly simple. Take the us.map, 
take the be-latin1.map, create a be_latin.ktl out of it by running:

	/usr/lib/syslinux/keytab-lilo.pl us.map be-latin1.map >be_latin1.ktl

Beware that I had to modify the default path inside the perl script and 
unzip the maps that usually are zipped on my system.

Also beware that the file be-latin1.ktl will end up being be_latin1.ktl.

Now after doing this, it doesn't work. The mappings seem not to have 
been changed and I even wonder whether the file is being used or it isn't 
supposed to work like this. I just refer to the file like:

	kbdmap be_latin1.ktl

and it is located in /isolinux/be_latin1.ktl

Now, is this supposed to work like this or is there some other mapping 
causing havoc (like citrix ot the java gui) and is there any chance we can 
debug if the file is being read ?

We talked to HP about this and they're official answer to this is that 
they only support a setup where the keyboard is consistently configured 
over the complete line. But this for us is impossible in the sense that 
before booting the operating system (or setup utility) the keyboard by 
default is us (so we have to configure the local system and remote citrix 
and java gui to us as well) and once we have started the anaconda process 
I have to remap all those instance to be-latin1 (belgian).

This seems pretty silly and makes it impossible to use the commandline 
(because some numbers eg 2, 7 and necessary characters eg :, = are NOT 
mapped at all)

I'd like to have a conclusive answer so we can fix this for syslinux (and 
have belgian keyboard configured everywhere). I'd like to integrate this 
with footprint to create custom bootdiscs that fix this for non-us 
keyboard users :)


Thanks in advance,
--   dag wieers,  dag at wieers.com,  http://dag.wieers.com/   --
[all I want is a warm bed and a kind word and unlimited power]