All this is new to me since four days ago.
Puppy works well except scroll lock is de-activated, pressing the key doesn't work. I do a lot of spreadsheet work and would like to have this on. My old ms-dos work-around, hold down the left shift while entering numbers on the numeric pad works, but I would rather have scroll lock on. Any ideas?

How is your keyboard identified in xorg.conf?

How would I learn this? And what difference would it make?

you can enable the scroll lock key by typing:

xmodmap -pm

to find an unused modifier ... on my machine, mod3 is free
to set up the scroll lock key on mod3, you can type:

xmodmap -e 'add mod3 = Scroll_Lock'

now the scroll lock key should work
but i don't know if Gnumeric will ignore it or not

you can put this line in the hidden file /root/.Xmodmap (create the file if it does not exist) to enable the scroll lock key every time X starts:

add mod3 = Scroll_Lock

The stated command does indeed work (thanks for the tip!) but the addition of a hidden /root/.Xmodmap doesn't work in Ubuntu 8.10. I'm guessing that is because there is no root user as such, since root privileges can only be accessed through "sudo" (or "su" if you've set up a root password), i.e. one cannot login as root directly.

Until I've located an appropriate place for the command, I'm keeping it in a bash script in my ~/bin.

achim_59

"The stated command does indeed work (thanks for the tip!) but the addition of a hidden /root/.Xmodmap doesn't work in Ubuntu 8.10. I'm guessing that is because there is no root user as such, since root privileges can only be accessed through "sudo" (or "su" if you've set up a root password), i.e. one cannot login as root directly.

"Until I've located an appropriate place for the command, I'm keeping it in a bash script in my ~/bin."

Doesn't work at all in Slackware 13.37/Fvwm95, running as root. The light comes on and then goes off at the second scroll-lock press, but nothing else happens.

Why is this still a problem?

I take back my original assertion. Since a recent upgrade to Ubuntu I haven't got the scroll-lock to work either. Neither the aforementioned bash script nor typing the command on a console work.

A quick check on the console reveals:

Note that 0x4e = 78 decimal.

From this I would normally deduce that the problem probably lies with my hardware set up which links keyboard, mouse and monitor to various machines via a switch. Only trouble is that I've been using this set up for years without a hitch. The use of the scroll-lock key does appear to get from the keyboard to the switch as indicated by a blinking light. At this point (and I'm not sure of the mechanism involved) the O/S should pass this on to my USB-Switch, which should then provide printer access to the machine which just issued 2 scroll-lock hits in succession. This works for the one and only Win2000 box I've got but neither of the Ubuntu Linux machines... well not in the past 10 months, anyway.

Achim.