[SOLVED] How do I turn numlock on at console start-up by reconfiguring initramfs?

Weapon S · 05-19-2022, 01:58 AM

I'm trying to get numlock to be on at start-up (console password prompt), but I don't use systemd, nor a desktop manager. This Arch Linux Wiki page suggests it can be done by changing some options of initramfs. The exact method seems not applicable to Debian though.

This page seems to offer a solution, but it seems sketchy to me, because the poster admits that they are not well versed in the subject, and adding an extra binary to the boot process (setleds) seems like a roundabout way for something this fundamental. My reasoning is that surely, if the boot process can turn off my numlock from my motherboard settings, there should be a way to tell it to not to turn off numlock.

I couldn't find any relevant kernel parameters either.

Weapon S · 05-19-2022, 03:45 AM

I looked up how the openrc numlock service tackled this problem (because I use openrc), which can be found here. That service seems to use systemd and an approach very similar to the solution provided at the link to superuser.com. So I used the solution at superuser.com.

Summarized:

/usr/share/initramfs-tools/hooks

Code:

#! /bin/sh -e

PREREQ=""

prereqs () {
    echo "$PREREQ"
}

case $1 in
prereqs)
    prereqs
    exit 0
    ;;
esac

. /usr/share/initramfs-tools/hook-functions

# Add setleds to initrd
if test -x /usr/bin/setleds ; then
   copy_exec /usr/bin/setleds /usr/bin/setleds
fi

exit 0

/usr/share//initramfs-tools/scripts/init-top

Code:

#!/bin/sh

PREREQ="console_setup brltty"
prereqs()
{
    echo "$PREREQ"
}
case $1 in
# get pre-requisites
prereqs)
    prereqs
    exit 0
    ;;
esac

if [ -x /usr/bin/setleds ] ; then
   INITTY=/dev/tty[1-8]
   for tty in $INITTY ; do 
       setleds -D +num < $tty 
       done 
fi

exit 0

Run

Code:

# update-initramfs -u