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I have a desktop running ubuntu 10.04 I want numlock to be turned on initially. What do I have to change to accomplish this?

~~edit~~

I checked in my BIOS. It was already set up to have the numlock turned on initially. Yet it isn't being turned on initially. I have a USB keyboard: would that break this functionality? Or, should I ask elsewhere (superuser, perhaps) about how to get that BOIS setting working properly?

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I think it's a BIOS thing, at least that's how I did it on my laptop. – Saifallah Dec 13 '10 at 14:43
    
Ah, I hadn't thought of that. I'll check that out. – David Oneill Dec 13 '10 at 14:46
up vote 8 down vote accepted

From the man page: "numlockx is a program to control the NumLock key inside X11 session scripts." It's a very simple tool. You invoke it from the commandline or a script

$ numlockx on

will enable numlock and

$ numlockx off

will disable it.

I use it with xfce myself as an autostarted application. Once you have installed the package, go to "Settings->Session and Startup" from the xfce menu. Click on the "Application Autostart" tab, and then on the Add button. Enter whatever you like in the Name and Description boxes and in the Command box, enter "numlockx on" (without the quotes). Click OK and Close, and the next time you login, you'll have your numlock on.

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That did the trick. Thanks! – David Oneill Dec 13 '10 at 17:09
up vote 3 down vote

You will have to try searching in your BIOS, if you do not want to do that then you can try numlockx, it is available in the repositories.

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What does numlockx do? – David Oneill Dec 13 '10 at 16:00
    
@David: it allows you to control numlock's status on login screen and upon login. – papukaija Jan 19 '11 at 20:39

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