After upgrade 11 -> 12.1, "unknown keysym 'dead_abovering'" during early boot, console keymap remains US

[Michael Kjörling]

Hello everyone.

Long time Debian user, newly subscribed to the mailing list.

I upgraded from current Debian 11 to 12.1 today. Almost everything
worked great, but during early boot I'm now getting the following
message:

unknown keysym 'dead_abovering'
/etc/console-setup/cached_UTF-8_del.kmap:27: syntax error
syntax error in map file
key bindings not changed

This is printed before the root file system fsck.

Uncompressing /etc/console-setup/cached_UTF-8_del.kmap.gz, line 27 is
for "keycode 26" and does indeed list "dead_abovering" on that line
(multiple times). My /etc/console-setup/cached_UTF-8_del.kmap.gz has
md5sum fcb9f3d5d1ca4d2d1b97f7794e32f3ed in case that helps identify
the exact file in use.

The .gz file is named in /etc/console-setup/cached_setup_keyboard.sh
and executing the loadkeys command from that script from within an
Xfce session gets me:

Loading /etc/console-setup/cached_UTF-8_del.kmap.gz
...(lots of assuming/found)...
unknown keysym 'dead_abovering'
/etc/console-setup/cached_UTF-8_del.kmap.gz:27: syntax error
syntax error in map file
key bindings not changed

I did see several "unknown keysym 'Omega'" (as well as 'omega') in the
loadkeys output as well, but I don't see those nor the assuming/found
during boot.

dpkg -l console-setup reports status "ii" for package version 1.221.
dpkg-reconfigure console-setup has not helped.

The file has and had a very recent mtime so it doesn't seem to be a
stale leftover file from before the upgrade to 12.1.

Checking on the console, I do seem to have a US keyboard layout as
opposed to my preferred Swedish layout.

Web searches were distinctly unhelpful.

Suggestions welcome. If more information would be helpful just let me
know what might be needed.

--
Michael Kjörling 🔗 https://michael.kjorling.se
“Remember when, on the Internet, nobody cared that you were a dog?”

[Michael Kjörling]

On 23 Jul 2023 20:32 +0000, from 2695bd...@ewoof.net (Michael Kjörling):

> unknown keysym 'dead_abovering'
> /etc/console-setup/cached_UTF-8_del.kmap:27: syntax error
> syntax error in map file
> key bindings not changed

No suggestions from anyone for anything to check, let alone a
solution? I'm a bit stumped at this one and I'd really like to get it
working.

[David Wright]

For my limited understanding of non-anglo layouts, that would seem
logical, as I don't understand why Swedish would use a dead abovering
keystroke, rather than having such frequently-used vowels available on
individual, single keystrokes.

Anyway, my MO, probably including a bit of cargo-cult, would be to
quit X, then run both dpkg-reconfigure keyboard-configuration and
dpkg-reconfigure console-setup, check that both /etc/default/keyboard
and console-setup look sane, and then reboot.

Cheers,
David.

[Michael Kjörling]

On 25 Jul 2023 09:17 -0500, from deb...@lionunicorn.co.uk (David Wright):

>> unknown keysym 'dead_abovering'
>> /etc/console-setup/cached_UTF-8_del.kmap:27: syntax error
>> syntax error in map file
>> key bindings not changed
>

> Anyway, my MO, probably including a bit of cargo-cult, would be to
> quit X, then run both dpkg-reconfigure keyboard-configuration and
> dpkg-reconfigure console-setup, check that both /etc/default/keyboard
> and console-setup look sane, and then reboot.

Cargo-cult or not, it seemed like a good idea; I didn't actually shut
down X, but I did log out of my X session and did it from a text
console, then verified that the configuration files looked reasonable
before rebooting. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to have made any
appreciable difference.

What's even more odd is that I spun up a VM based on 12.0 upgraded to
current, with the following in the preseed file:

d-i debian-installer/language string en
d-i debian-installer/country string SE
d-i debian-installer/locale string en_US.UTF-8
d-i keyboard-configuration/xkb-keymap select se

That one does not display any similar error on boot, and its
/etc/default/console-setup and /etc/default/keyboard look functionally
identical to what's on my main system, and
/etc/console-setup/cached_UTF-8_del.kmap.gz (which my main system is
clearly complaining about) has the same cksum including file size on
both.

[Robbie Dinn]

Hello Michael

It looks like you are making progress.

A couple of ideas:

I used dpkg-query to check what package the file
/etc/console-setup/cached_UTF-8_del.kmap might belong to.

freon@debian:~$ dpkg-query -S /etc/console-setup/cached_UTF-8_del.kmap.gz
dpkg-query: no path found matching pattern /etc/console-setup/cached_UTF-8_del.kmap.gz
freon@debian:~$

If it is just a cached file, could you move it out of the way to see if
it gets recreated the same?

The other idea was, if you have a working kmap setup in your virtual machine
install, could you "suck" the keymap settings out of that machine using the
xmodmap utility, then copy them to the broken machine and inject them into
the Xserver overriding the configured keymap (using xmodmap again?).

This might work as a temporary measure, but I haven't tried it myself so
I could be talking rubbish.

Regards
Robbie Dinn

[Michael Kjörling]

On 25 Jul 2023 17:09 +0100, from robbi...@gmail.com (Robbie Dinn):

> I used dpkg-query to check what package the file
> /etc/console-setup/cached_UTF-8_del.kmap might belong to.
>
> freon@debian:~$ dpkg-query -S /etc/console-setup/cached_UTF-8_del.kmap.gz
> dpkg-query: no path found matching pattern /etc/console-setup/cached_UTF-8_del.kmap.gz
> freon@debian:~$
>
> If it is just a cached file, could you move it out of the way to see if
> it gets recreated the same?

I tried this in a VM (it's nice to be able to spin up brand new,
up-to-date VMs in a few minutes of hands-off time to test things; that
time I spent writing a preseed configuration has certainly paid itself
back since...), deleting /etc/console-setup/cached* and running
dpkg-reconfigure console-setup. As far as I can tell the files were
put back in /etc/console-setup, with the same contents (same cksum as
the main system).

Since a freshly installed system boots without printing this error
message, and I imagine an error like this would have been caught
during the testing and stabilization phase, I figure it's likely
_something_ about my configuration which is tripping _something_ up. I
just can't figure out what that might be.

> The other idea was, if you have a working kmap setup in your virtual machine
> install, could you "suck" the keymap settings out of that machine using the
> xmodmap utility, then copy them to the broken machine and inject them into
> the Xserver overriding the configured keymap (using xmodmap again?).

I don't think that'd do anything particularly useful. Maybe I could,
but I don't seem to have any problem with the keyboard layout in X,
including at the login screen username entry; only at the text console
(getty and friends).

It also occured to me that since the error is printed very early
during boot, maybe it was caused by something in the initrd somehow
having got out of sync with the normal root file system that I'm
looking at. Alas, `update-initramfs -u -k all` did regenerate initrds
for all three currently installed kernels without reporting any
problems, but I still got the same error on the subsequent reboot. So
not _that_ simple.

Still, I very much appreciate the ideas!

[Michael Kjörling]

On 23 Jul 2023 20:32 +0000, from 2695bd...@ewoof.net (Michael Kjörling):

> I upgraded from current Debian 11 to 12.1 today. Almost everything
> worked great, but during early boot I'm now getting the following
> message:
>
> unknown keysym 'dead_abovering'
> /etc/console-setup/cached_UTF-8_del.kmap:27: syntax error
> syntax error in map file
> key bindings not changed
>
> This is printed before the root file system fsck.

Okay, I was able to pinpoint this to a somewhat more specific point in
the boot sequence by booting without the "quiet" kernel parameter. The
below is what I was able to piece out from video around when the error
message is displayed.

> [ 1.500128] x86/mm: Checked W+X mappings: passed, ...
> [ 1.500183] Run /init as init process
> Loading, please wait...

> unknown keysym 'dead_abovering'
> /etc/console-setup/cached_UTF-8_del.kmap:27: syntax error
> syntax error in map file
> key bindings not changed

> Starting systemd-udevd version 252.12-1~deb12u1

After the above the USB detection starts scrolling past way too fast
for the camera.

This is well past "Trying to unpack rootfs image as init"... at
0.586242 but before the storage device scan beginning at about 1.8,
let alone final storage device attachment and name assignment which
happens at around 10.9 seconds into the boot. All times during that
particular boot, of course.

Another way of putting it is that whatever tries to load the kmap file
and being unhappy about it happens VERY early after systemd is first
started by the kernel.

Not sure if this is a clue or not to what's going wrong, but it seems
like relevant data.