On Tue, Dec 29, 2009 at 10:25:25PM -0500, Stephen Ronan wrote:
> and then did this:
> xmodmap /usr/share/xmodmap/xmodmap.us

Are you sure that's the xmodmap file your system is using?  If you
only made that one modification, it seems odd that the rest of your
keyboard would go wonky.   I'd try this:

 $ xmodmap -pke > keymap
 edit the file keymap to change F12 to u as you desire
 $ xmodmap keymap
 
I tried this on my system, and it worked fine.  Though, I tried
setting it to this:

  keycode  96 = u U

This should make F12 generate 'u', and Shift+F12 generate 'U', though
for whatever reason it does not.  Both generate 'u' for me.  Not sure
why...  I used to know this stuff pretty well, but that was prolly 10
years ago and the details have long since departed from my brain. ;-)

> When I try stuff from this page:
> http://linux.die.net/man/5/keymaps
> like f'rinstance typing dumpkeys -l, I get error messages like this:
> "couldn't get a file descriptor referring to the console"

The dumpkeys utility is for the kernel's console driver I believe...
The console and X windows each have their own completely separate
mechanism for managing key maps.

-- 
Derek D. Martin    http://www.pizzashack.org/   GPG Key ID: 0xDFBEAD02
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