Subj : Execution of setupcon at boot
To   : All
From : Anton Shepelev
Date : Sun Sep 15 2024 21:20:37

XPost: alt.os.linux.debian

Hello, all

On RPi OS Bookworm, console and keyboard initialisation via `setupcon' seem
doubly duplicated (sic), and I am x-posting this to .debian because it
may not be speific to Pi OS:

1. in that systemd services and init.d scripts do the same thing:
     /etc/init.d:
        console-setup.sh       -> /lib/console-setup/console-setup.sh
        keyboard-setup.sh      -> /lib/console-setup/keyboard-setup.sh

     /usr/lib/systemd/system:
        console-setup.service  -> /lib/console-setup/console-setup.sh
        keyboard-setup.service -> /lib/console-setup/keyboard-setup.sh

2. in that /lib/console-setup/console-setup.sh includes both console and
   keyboard setup, making keyboard-setup.sh redundant.

This is futher complicated by what I consider two crutches in
/lib/console-setup/keyboard-setup.sh :

1. `setupcon' is invoked if and only if at least one of following
   conditions is met:

   1. this is /not/ the first time after reboot that the script runs --
      a special case misleadingly annotated in the source as skipping an
      invocation "after boot," without an explanation why it should be
      skipped. Nor does it always /skip/ the invocation, because this is
      only one of the two sufficient (OR'ed) conditions .

   2. the cache (from a previous invocation with --size) does not exist
      or is older than the default configuration in
      /etc/default/console-setup.

2. it invokes `setupcon' with the --size option, which causes it to
	cache the necessary data files under /etc/console-setup so that they
	are available to subsequent invocations before /usr is mounted, e.g.
	at an early state of the boot process. In the script, however, --size
	seems redunadant, because:

   1. if at the time of invocation /usr is not yet mounted, `setupcon'
      will take its data from the cache, and --size will have no effect,
      (expect, perhaps, rewriting the cache with the same contents).

   2. if at the time invocation /usr is already mounted, `setupcon' will
      build the data based on its config file,
      /etc/default/console-setup ,
      and the files in /usr .

Therefore, I think that all this confusing complexity can be reduced to
a very simple invocation that configures both keyboard and console:

   if [ -f /etc/default/locale ]; then
      # In order to permit auto-detection of the charmap when
      # console-setup-mini operates without configuration file.
      . /etc/default/locale
      export LANG
   fi
   setupcon

and is invoked by a single systemd service requiring that /usr be
mounted, as the current services already do.  Perhaps it is a newbie's
wishful thinking, so what is the reason for current setup? Also, are
able to configure your Bookworms to set the font in your TTYs without
changing the aforementioned shell scripts? I was not, and had to
simplify the process as described above.

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