vconsole.conf overwritten during kernel upgrade

ibes · 2013-11-15 08:37:34

Hi,

some minutes ago I performed a full system upgrade which also contained the new kernel version "3.12.0-1." During the generation of the initial ramdisk, mkinitcpio issued the warning

  -> Running build hook: [keymap]
==> WARNING: keymap: hook specified, but no KEYMAP found in configuration

which struck me as I had already successfully configured the keymap hook. Everything that is necessary for the keymap hook to work is setting a preferred locale by adapting the KEYMAP variable in /etc/vconsole.conf correspondingly. I require the keymap hook since I use cryptsetup for full disk encryption which prompts for a passphrase upon every boot. In my case, the passphrase contains some special characters whose positions on the layout of my keyboard (a German variant) vary considerably from their positions on the default US keyboard layout.

During the upgrade, /etc/vconsole.conf somehow was overwritten so that it now looks as follows:

FONT=
FONT_MAP=

Before the upgrade, its contents were as follows:

KEYMAP=de-latin1
FONT=latarcyrheb-sun16

The odd thing about this is that in the past /etc/vconsole.conf had already "survived" a number of kernel upgrades. Does anybody have an idea how you can prevent this from happening again during some future kernel upgrade?

jasonwryan · 2013-11-15 08:52:19

It sounds like a bug. What packages were upgraded (other than the kernel)? Was a .pacsave generated?

karol · 2013-11-15 09:13:23

My /etc/vconsole.conf wasn't overwritten.
No package owns /etc/vconsole.conf and AFAICT, no package has it in its backup array, so no .pacsave will be generated.

ibes · 2013-11-15 13:45:57

The following packages were upgraded:

mesa (9.2.2-1 -> 9.2.3-1)
mesa-libgl (9.2.2-1 -> 9.2.3-1)
ati-dri (9.2.2-1 -> 9.2.3-1)
gnome-maps (3.10.0-1 -> 3.10.2-1)
gnome-photos (3.10.1-1 -> 3.10.2-1)
mutter (3.10.1.1-1 -> 3.10.2-1)
gnome-shell (3.10.1-1 -> 3.10.2-1)
linux (3.11.6-1 -> 3.12-1)
lirc-utils (1:0.9.0-64 -> 1:0.9.0-65)
mdadm (3.3-1 -> 3.3-2)
nspr (4.10.1-2 -> 4.10.2-1)
nss (3.15.2-1 -> 3.15.3-1)
python2-cssutils (0.9.10-2 -> 0.9.10-4)
python2-setuptools (1.1.6-1 -> 1.3-1)

No .pacsave was generated. And indeed no package owns /etc/vconsole.conf:

$ pacman -Ql | grep 'vconsole.conf'
systemd /usr/share/man/man5/vconsole.conf.5.gz

Very strange

karol · 2013-11-15 13:48:33

It simply means Arch doesn't ship any default config.

ibes · 2013-11-15 13:59:52

Still the question remains for what reason any program or script would touch this file. What is the best way to investigate this?

Arch Linux

#1 2013-11-15 08:37:34

vconsole.conf overwritten during kernel upgrade

#2 2013-11-15 08:52:19

Re: vconsole.conf overwritten during kernel upgrade

#3 2013-11-15 09:13:23

Re: vconsole.conf overwritten during kernel upgrade

#4 2013-11-15 13:45:57

Re: vconsole.conf overwritten during kernel upgrade

#5 2013-11-15 13:48:33

Re: vconsole.conf overwritten during kernel upgrade

#6 2013-11-15 13:59:52

Re: vconsole.conf overwritten during kernel upgrade

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