How To Get NUM LOCK to Default to On

Use the setleds program, for example (in /etc/rc.local or one of the
/etc/rc.d/* files):

for t in 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
do
setleds +num < /dev/tty$t > /dev/null
done

setleds is part of the kbd package ("How do I remap my keyboard to UK,
French, etc.? "). Alternatively, patch your kernel. You need to
arrange for KBD_DEFLEDS to be defined to (1 << VC_NUMLOCK) when
compiling drivers/char/keyboard.c.