Brazilia Lenovo S400: just installed 8.4 but I can't get keyboard to work properly

michelbehr

michelbehr

Hi!

I already consulted the Handbook many times, I Googled a lot trying to understand how to configure the keyboard for my Lenovo S400, but I've found all kinds of different procedures and none is working for me. :(

The problem is that my notebook is Brazilian (few users I guess?) Oh, and on IRC no one answered this. :\

Below is a picture of the keyboard - the Ç key when I press several times gives '/347' and the /? key is just not responding.

http://michelbehr.net/test/lenovo s400 keyboard.png

Any help would be welcome.

Thanks in advance!

BTW: I'm in console, not X.
 
In general, you set the keymap= entry in /etc/rc.conf to the keymap you want. For a user who wants a Norwegian keymap, it looks like this:
Code: 
keymap="norwegian.iso"
See also kbdmap(1). I do not know what the Brazilian keymap is, sorry.
 
Thank you for your response Tingo, but I already tried that.

FreeBSD gives several options for Portuguese/Brazilian keyboard maps, I tried them all, and the closest that works for me is
Code: 
br275.cp850
. Now, there are three keys that don't work on this mapping: "çÇ", "/?", and "´`". What I want to do is to copy the
Code: 
br275.cp850
keymap into something like
Code: 
br275.s400
, and adjust the keymapping myself in the kbd file. The problem is that I don't know what the scancodes for this keys are, and I don't know how to find that out. To be honest, I've found a program on ports that do just that (gives the scancode for a given key) but I can't install the program yet because I don't have connection to the Internet. :-) Which would lead me to another issue that I don't want to face right now: configuring my wireless connection.

So, is there a way to find out what the scancodes for these three keys are?

Anyway, thanx thanks for your help! (I'm going to keep trying to solve this, if I find the answer I'll post here.)
 
Hmm, not sure how to get scancodes, if you have Xorg installed you can use xev(1) to report what codes the keys produce (if any). It probably won't work if the keys in question are not mapped (ie. they do not generate codes when pressed).
 
Assuming the scan codes in hardware are the same for all keyboards, and comparing that keymap file with an English keymap:

The first key is in the same spot as a semicolon, so should be scan code 039. The second (/ ?) is 053. The third should be 026.
 
Thank you guys - I just found out that my wireless card (Intel Centrino wireless-n 2230) is not supported. And that if I want to convert from Windows drivers - which doesn't seem to be an easy task! - I wouldn't be able to use an amd64 kernel.

I really like the FreeBSD project, the principles, how the community works hard to make good documentation, but... in the end, problems need to be solved. My keyboard doesn't work, my wireless card doesn't get detected, I got kicked-off and ignored on several IRC channels, googled A LOT trying to find alternatives and in the end the promise of "good documentation" is not completely fulfilled IMHO. Where's the documentation about keyboards? There's only the "happy paths" described! I get completely different error messages! And no drivers.

Am I being too picky? I mean, I really want to learn UNIX, I erased Windows 8 to use FreeBSD! Like "burn the ships and don't look back!" :)

Well... LinuxMint, here I go :-\ (any comments are welcome, I'm kinda kind of disappointed with FreeBSD)
 
Look, what you should understand about FreeBSD is that we will try to help you help yourself. I liked the fact that you had looked up how to use keymaps. But a relatively small group of mostly volunteers cannot anticipate every situation.

The problem with keymap documentation is that no one has written it. If you will write it, I will work with you on getting it into the Localization chapter of the Handbook.

Start a new thread for the wireless and we will try to help you with it.

Oh, and don't blame us for whatever happened on IRC. This isn't IRC, and it wasn't us.
 
Young people today have no stamina - they quit at the first few obstacles. How can a person learn something with that attitude?
Try harder!
 
Hey @tingo - I guess you're right, not a healthy attitude from my part on that post, sorry about that. I think I got my expectation up too high from reading about the FreeBSD mission, why it would be better than Linux in some aspects, etc. But no excuse for moaning, and I really don't know if I have enough stamina for FreeBSD! :-) Maybe that's one of the things that I admire about open source projects. I just want to say one thing: FreeBSD is advertised as an OS that has a very solid and good documentation, way better than Linux, and a system that is coherent, stable, etc. But to solve the issues I faced, I had to rely on forums, blogs, mail-lists, etc, just like Linux! Both for the keyboard AND the wireless issue.

@wblock, I'm considering contributing to the keyboard part of the handbook, and I appreciate your availability to help me do that. Unfortunately I don't understand it quite well yet to write anything about it :-) and even if I did, my contributions would probably fit best in the FAQ section (but first I need to actually solve the keyboard issue!)

About the wireless card, I know the NetBSD guys have the 2230 driver issue on their pipeline, and there are people there that seem fanatic about working on drivers, so maybe I'll take a look at how I can participate on this front there.

I decided to run LinuxMint for now on my Lenovo S400 - just until I find a way to use the wireless card. For the record: it's Olivia, and it went really smooth on the S400. But I still want FreeBSD for it! :-)
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Thank you for sticking around. Don't worry about the "writing docs" part of it, just take notes as you do it so that you can repeat the process. The rest of it is markup, and we have lots of people who can help with that.

ndisgen(8) may allow you to use the wireless card. And you can also run FreeBSD in a VirtualBox VM using Windows or Linux as a host. That could be a convenient way to experiment with the keyboard settings, while keeping the host computer available at the same time.
 
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