Bug 211803

Summary:	keycode from showkey unchanged after change by setkeycodes
Product:	[Fedora] Fedora	Reporter:	Claus Olesen <colesen>
Component:	kbd	Assignee:	Miloslav Trmač <mitr>
Status:	CLOSED RAWHIDE	QA Contact:
Severity:	medium	Docs Contact:
Priority:	medium
Version:	5
Target Milestone:	---
Target Release:	---
Hardware:	All
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:	1.12-20	Doc Type:	Bug Fix
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	2006-12-07 17:34:12 UTC	Type:	---
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description Claus Olesen 2006-10-23 04:28:22 UTC

Description of problem:
A change of keycode of special keys (scancode 0xe...) using 
command "setkeycodes" does not take actual effect allthough reflected by 
command "getkeycodes". 

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
Linux 2.6.18-1.2200.fc5 i686 athlon i386 GNU/Linux fully up2date

How reproducible:
Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. ensure that X server is not running.
2. login as root
3. enter command "showkey -s"
4. press-release a special key on the keyboard
5. make note of reported scancode
5. enter command "showkey -k"
6. press-release the same key
7. make note of reported keycode
8. enter command "setkeycodes scancode keycode2"
where scancode is the same as the above reported by showkey for the key press 
but keycode is a different value than that above reported by showkey.
9. verify change using command "getkeycodes"
10. again enter command "showkey -k"
11. press-release the same key


Actual results:
12. the keycode reported is unchanged and did not change to the value set by 
the command "setkeycodes"


Expected results:
I expected the change of keycode to take effect because it used to (maybe a 
year ago when I last used command "setkeycodes").


Additional info:
I just got a USB keyboard. I already had a PS/2 keyboard. Both have a top row 
of special keys that both include for example a WWW key that's supposed to 
launch an internet browser. But only one of the WWW keys actually does; the 
other does nothing. The keycodes of the WWW keys are different so I'm trying to 
(re-)set the keycode of the non working WWW key to the same keycode as that of 
the other WWW key that does work.

Comment 1 Florian Festi 2006-11-14 11:11:12 UTC

This is a problem related to the new input facilities in the 2.6 kernel. In the
2.6 kernel scan codes are dropped very early and only key codes make their way
through the driver stack. If an application (like showkey -s) set its tty to raw
mode the kernel emulates scan codes using a fixed table which assigns each key
code a scan code. 

I don't see a simple way of fixing the above problem, but we should at least
update the man pages of showkey and setkeycodes to reflex that kernel changes.

In addition it should be mentioned that setkeycodes does not work with USB
keyboards.

Comment 2 Miloslav Trmač 2006-11-28 12:02:43 UTC

Are you performing the "steps to reproduce" on the PS/2 keyboard or the USB
keyboard?

setkeycodes doesn't affect USB keyboards at all, but changing the PS/2 keyboard
mapping worked fine for me.

Comment 3 Claus Olesen 2006-11-29 09:40:53 UTC

I did not know nor expect that the type of input device would matter and I 
don't remember clearly which keyboard I used - so I just retested and now 
realize as the comments say that the issue is with the USB keyboard only.

I have 2 keyboards - a PS/2 Adesso MCK-91 (notebook type keyboard) and a USB 
Belkin MediaPilot (wireless). The PS/2 is connected via a Netgear KVM. The USB 
is directly connected. Both are connected simultaneously.

Both keyboards have a WWW button that I used for the test. Keycodes 130 and 
131 were not used according to getkeycodes so I used them for the test. Test 
condition otherwise is fc6 vanilla fully up2date.

Here's my results (with time increasing downwards)

              PS/2 (MCK-91)         USB (MediaPilot)

showkey -s    0xe0 0x24 0xe0 0xa4   0xe0 0x02 0xe0 0x82
showkey -k    166                   172
getkeycodes   166 (value of e024)   0   (value of e002)

setkeycodes   e024 130              e002 131

showkey -s    0xe0 0x06 0xe0 0x86   unchanged
showkey -k    130                   unchanged
getkeycodes   130 (value of e024)   131 (value of e002)

getkeycodes   0   (value of e006)

My conclusion is

PS/2 (MCK-91):
Everything works - except that a change of keycode changes the scancode?

USB (MediaPilot):
Nothing works - except that a change of keycode is correctly picked up by 
getkeycodes.

Comment 4 Claus Olesen 2006-11-29 09:50:58 UTC

In my above comment - the "Netgear KVM" is a "PS/2 Netgear KVM".

Comment 5 Miloslav Trmač 2006-12-07 17:34:12 UTC

Thanks, this confirms that everything is working "as designed".

I have expanded the documentation in the setkeycodes and showkey man pages in
rawhide kbd-1.12-20.