KEYTAB-LILO.PL(8)

💅 KEYTAB-LILO.PL(8) — aka keytab-lilo

ok bestie, gather round, because this one is a little compiler for your keyboard and it's genuinely iconic ✨

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🌸 NAME 🌸

keytab-lilo — compiles keytable files so LILO can actually use them 🎀

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🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

/usr/sbin/keytab-lilo [-p R old_code = new_code ] ...  [default_layout]
kbd_layout

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💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

so keytab-lilo is a program that takes keytable definitions — written in the format that keytables(5) lays out — and compiles them into a format lilo(8) can use to set the keyboard type at boot time. specifically, it hooks into the keytable parameter in /etc/lilo.conf. no cap, that's the whole job 💅

kbd_layout should be the name of a map file that specifies the keyboard layout you actually want. and listen — this file can be gzip(1) compressed, we're flexible like that. if you don't give a file extension, .map.gz is assumed. if you don't give the full pathname, /usr/share/keymaps/ is assumed. so the vibes are: just tell it the name, it'll figure out the rest 🫶

now here's the tea: lilo basically only needs to know the differences between the BIOS keyboard mapping and the one you want. so the default_layout file should contain a keytables(5) file for the BIOS default mapping. if you don't specify a default_layout file at all, then us.map.gz gets used. it's giving "sensible defaults, main character energy" 👑

and the output? keytab-lilo writes the output translation table as a binary string to standard output, so you absolutely should redirect it to a suitable file, bestie. do not just let it spill out onto your terminal, that's chaos 😭

lilo has no particular restrictions on what you name your keyboard translation files, but the suggested naming convention and location is /boot/mapping.ktl — where .ktl stands for "Keyboard Table for Lilo". cute, right? 🌈

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✨ OPTIONS ✨

• -p R old_code = new_code — specifies corrections ("patches") to the mapping obtained from the translation table files. for example, if pressing the upper case "A" should yield an at sign, you'd use -p 65=64. the -p option can be repeated any number of times, so go off, stack as many as you need 💅. the codes can also be given as hexadecimal or as octal numbers if they're prefixed with 0x or 0, respectively 🧚

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🍓 EXAMPLES 🍓

keytab-lilo dvorak >/boot/dvorak.ktl

this is the most common form of invocation, and honestly it's the one you'll use 99% of the time. it simply compiles the given map file — in this case dvorak — and puts the result in /boot/dvorak.ktl. slay 🔥

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👑 AUTHOR 👑

Werner Almesberger (almesber@bernina.ethz.ch).

Peter Maydell (pmaydell@chiark.greenend.org.uk) wrote this manual page. we love a documentation girlie 💜

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🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

lilo(8), keytables(5), gzip(1)

lilo comes with extensive documentation which can be found in /usr/share/doc/lilo-doc/ on Debian-based systems. go read it, iykyk 📚

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ok that's the whole page bestie, every flag, every default, every path, all of it. now go compile yourself a keyboard and be the main character of your own boot process 💖

April 1998 — KEYTAB-LILO.PL(8) 🎀 that's the date and the source, mwah, bye bestie 🫶