Author Topic: Model 'M' keyboard LEDs  (Read 776 times)

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Offline ultra24

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Model 'M' keyboard LEDs
« on: Sun, 20 June 2021, 14:26:37 »
Hello:

While continuing with the work on my US made Lexmark 1995 Model 'M', it dawned on me that, while I had seen that all the LEDs worked properly ie: lit up, activating the Scroll Lock key did not make the corresponding LED light up as expected.

So I set off to check if I had the keyboard configuration right on the terminal via dpkg-reconfigure keyboard-configuration only to find that it was correctly set. ie:  Generic 102-key PC (intl.) Spanish (dead tilde) Right Alt (AltGr) No compose key

After searching a bit, I found that in some distributions (I use Devuan Linux), the Scroll Lock key is not enabled in X by default.

I'm passing this on as I didn't find it here and may eventually be useful to someone.
https://www.pclinuxos.com/forum/index.php/topic,125690.msg1052201.html?PHPSESSID=2qsv83lve6dgd0ivq14bfcjc30#msg1052201

Basically it boils down to editing the /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/[language] your installation uses:

Quote

Try adding the following line in your /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/nl file, at the xkb_symbols "basic" section after making a backup (cp /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/nl /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/nl.distribution)

...
modifier_map Mod3   { Scroll_Lock }; <==<< Add this line

    include "level3(ralt_switch)" <==<< before this line
};
...

You may have to do the same in your /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/us file if you are switching layouts.
Also, there is a cache where xkb layouts live.  You should clear it before restarting your X server to check the new keyboard symbol file(s).

#  rm -f /var/lib/lib/xkb/*
#  rm -f /var/lib/xkb/*

Now the Scroll Lock LED lights up as expected.
But I cannot recall the last time I actually neded to use it, must have been many years ago under MS-DOS.

Best,

U24