David Emerson wrote: > I've just purchased an external keyboard for my laptop, and the > keycodes reported by xev (and showkey on VT) are not as expected. I don't know but no one else has responded so I might as well include some information. > The keyboard is an IBM SK-8840; the laptop is an IBM Thinkpad, with > a very similar keyboard. Both keyboards include two extra keys by > the arrow keys, designated "back" and "forward". These work great on > the built-in keyboard: showkey reports keycodes 158 and 159, which I > can map however I like in X11. I have looked at that keyboard, and the one without the touchpad, myself a few times. It would be nice to have the same keyboard both on my laptop and on my desktop. > However, I am not receiving those keycodes from the external > keyboard. I am getting Alt_L + Left arrow (back) and Alt_L + Right > arrow (forward). In showkey this corresponds to codes 105 and 106 > respectively, along with Alt_L, code 56. I have seen something similar with other keyboards that I have used. Unfortunately I don't think it is that unusual for different keyboards to implement different keycodes from either other for some of the peripheral keys. In particular my T60p laptop has different keycodes for Alt_R, Menu, Cntrl_R than my PC105 desktop keyboard. > Is there something in the kernel that could be doing this? Maybe > something in udev, or ... I don't know? First, I don't know. But as a hint of where to look next I would log into the linux text console (not under X) and start there. Then after getting it fixed then try it under X. Because it seems that if it works from the kernel that it might just work under X without doing anything more. On the Linux console I would start with dumpkeys. It has been a while since I have used this and I forget if options are needed or not. You will need to read the docs. Then examine the resulting key dump file. Compare the dumped file with the keycodes that you want. Edit the file in order to adjust your dump to match what you want. I would create a file that only sets what you want and not the entire dump. For your keys it should be just a few lines. Then use loadkeys to load the custom keymap file. (I do this as a matter of course to make a custom key layout for me.) Then under X Windows I would use 'xmodmap -pke' to do basically the same thing but for X. Dump the file. Examine the current map. Make an xmodmap file that contains just the keys you want to adjust. It is simpler later to know what you are changing if the file only contains the changes you wish to make. The load it with xmodmap -l. Good luck! Bob
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