My computer, an old Toshiba Satellite, starts with NumLock on. The kernel seems to pick up on this and sets NumLock on in every virtual terminal, even though I've used setleds to turn it off as soon as I can in the boot process. I'd like to make it off. Is there something I can change to make the kernel so decide?

A computer I had in the '90s had NumLock setting as a settable feature in the BIOS. This computer doesn't.

If you turn the numlock off, then reboot, does the numlock come back on at startup? If so, I can't imagine how it can be anything other than a BIOS setting.

It's been a long time since I've mucked about in a BIOS, but I recall that some of the were much easier to navigate than others. Perhaps a web search will turn up a copy of the manual for the particular type/version of BIOS in that machine.

yes.

It could be in ROM.

I assume that the kernel has taken it over after it loads, which should mean I can get the kernel to police this for me.


I've already consulted the manual.

Yes it is in the bios, first thing I always change.
Dennis

It isn't on this computer.

It's nothing to do with the BIOS — it's an init script. In System V init, the file is /etc/rc.d/init.d/numlock, but no doubt Slackware does something different!

Have you looked in ROM? Is it there? I want to know, too, because my laptop also starts with Num Lock. I see no ROM in Bios.

What distro and desktop environment? There are settings in most DEs for numlock. That won't affect it before the DE starts, but will afterwards.

"numlockx", maybe?

http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/...umlockx.1.html

Slackware lacks this, but the BIOS can be involved. All my previous computers started with numlock off except the 1 that allowed setting it in the BIOS. This computer starts with it on and it's not settable in the BIOS. I was wondering if Linux took a cue from the BIOS's setting.

It's not in my BIOS but is in some. I'm sure you can figure yours out.

Slackware. I use FVWM95 for my window manager, no desktop: I start only an xterm, run all commands from the command line.

Ubuntu has this; some distributions have rc.numlock.

@rinaldij posted in another thread:
in rc.local turns it off for every virtual terminal, but not xterm, my real target.

It annoys me that X turns on the NumLock LED (but not the state!) when it starts and every time it's switched to. Because I never had the problem before, and this computer turns NumLock on at boot, I wondered if they are related.

There is numlockx in slackbuilds
You can install it and add in ~/.xinitrc "/usr/bin/numlockx off" to turn numlock off in X.

I downloaded the source and built it.

It doesn't work for me. I searched and found a few others with my complaint, but no solutions. I had a complete set of X docs 30 years ago. It's hard to believe there isn't a setting, an XkbOptions, for this, but I can't find it.

My old Satellite with GM965 chipset and openSUSE Leap has no NUM setting in BIOS, no separate NUM pad, no NUM key, and behaves NAICT like NUM is off. When I plug in a USB keyboard, NUM is off, and turning it on produces entirely expected results.

Have you ever tried booting something other than Slack to see if your's behavior then differs?

A simplified variant of the above:

in startx solved my problem. I have 10 virtual terminals, so tty11 is the one X uses.