NUMLOCKX 1.0 -Lubos Lunak

This little thingy allows you to start X with NumLock turned on ( which is a feature that a lot of people seem to miss and nobody really knew how to achieve this ). This code relies on X extensions called XTest and XKB, so you need to have at least one of these X extensions installed ( you most probably do ).

Please note that I'm not interested in problems caused by your distribution being different from mine. NumLockX is written so it should work on plain X, and I don't have the time to play with all distros there are, sorry. If it doesn't work with your distro because they changed something in the configuration files, bother them to include this package with their next release ( with the necessary modifications ). It's much better that way, since NumLockX requires modifications of several files and it's better if they do the changes themselves. This is supposed to be the last version of NumLockX anyway ( hopefully ).
The same way, please don't send me any binary packages. Such packages simply can't be good because they need to modify files that don't belong to them. Please bother your favourite distribution instead.

QUICK INSTALL :

First of all, make sure this package isn't already included in your distribution ( e.g. Mandrake includes it ). If you distribution already includes NumLockX, use their package instead ( it needn't be necessarily called NumLockX, it may be e.g. part of some other package ).

Otherwise, do :
./configure
make
make install
make xsetup
make xinitrc

If everything compiles, installs and works fine, you're done. Great :) .

DETAILED INSTALL :

First of all, make sure this package isn't already included in your distribution ( e.g. Mandrake includes it ). If you distribution already includes NumLockX, use it instead. To find out if your distribution includes NumLockX, read the docs, or see if there's a package called 'numlock' or similar.

Otherwise, do :
./configure
make
make install

'make install' will put the executable in your <X directory>/bin directory.
Do 'numlockx ?' for usage. Now you need to call it somewhere while starting X and it will always make X start with NumLock turned on.

If you use kdm ( xdm, whatever ... simply if X starts automatically ), add a line containing '/usr/X11R6/bin/numlockx on' ( assuming that the compiled binary is in /usr/X11R6/bin ) somewhere in file /etc/X11/xdm/Xsetup_0 ( make xsetup will do this ). For people using startx, put that line somewhere at the beginning of file /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc ( make xinitrc will do this ). In case you don't know if you use kdm/xdm/... or startx, simply modify both files. Both 'make xsetup' and 'make xinitrc' copy your original Xsetup_0 and xinitrc to Xsetup_0.sav and xinitrc.sav respectively in numlockx build directory in case something goes wrong. 'make xsetup_uninstall' and 'make xinitrc_uninstall' remove changes made
in Xsetup_0 and xinitrc.

PROBLEMS :

First of all, let me repeat that I'm not interested in your distribution specific problems. It works fine here, and I don't time to bother with your distro, sorry. Try to bother your distribution to include this package with their next release with the necessary changes.

If it doesn't compile, there are two possibilities :
- You have XTest or XKB, but configure failed to find it. Do 'xdpyinfo' and look for 'XTEST' or 'XKB' in the list of extensions.

- You have neither XTest nor XKB ... bad luck :( .

If the executable doesn't work ... bad luck :( .

If configure fails to find Xsetup_0 or xinitrc, because you have them elsewhere than in the directories where configure script looks for them, do the change manually.

If you're not root and therefore you can modify neither Xsetup_0 nor xinitrc, you can use your ~/.xinitrc ( in your home directory ). NumLock won't be turned on in kdm/xdm/... but it will be turned on after starting your X session ( you may use 'make user_xinitrc' to do this ).


Thanks to Oswald Buddenhagen <ossi@kde.org> for the XKB way of doing things.


Lubos Lunak
l.lunak@kde.org