Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 481185
No hal device access policy for keyboard
Last modified: 2009-12-18 02:40:40 EST
Description of problem: I tried to configure pulseudio to use my keyboard's multimedia keys to control sound, but this failed due to not having authorisation to directly access the keyboard. This appears to be due to a missing hal device access policy. Further details: Pulseaudio is configured in .pulse/default.pa, load-module module-mmkbd-evdev device=/dev/input/eventX where eventX corresponds to the keyboard device. This fails, with "module-mmkbd-evdev.c: failed to open evdev device: Permission denied" appearing in /var/log/messages. However, when eventX refers to a mouse device, this succeeds. Unfortunately, my mouse does not have a volume control.. I used the policykit GUI to discover that I have permission to directly access the mouse, but no permission to directly access the keyboard device is available. This can be confirmed by examining /usr/share/PolicyKit/policy/org.freedesktop.hal.device-access.policy and finding no mention of the keyboard. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): hal-0.5.12-14.20081027git.fc10.i386 pulseaudio-0.9.13-6.fc10.i386 xorg-x11-drv-evdev-2.1.0-1.fc10.i386 Note: Hal seemed like the best place to file the bug. If direct device access is not reasonable, this is probably a pulseaudio or evdev bug.
From #pulseaudio IRC: [Thu Feb 5 2009] <mezcalero> henshaw: that module is not really useful for anything but embedded boxes [Thu Feb 5 2009] <mezcalero> henshaw: gnome implements the hotkey stuff anyway KDE's kmix also allows multimedia volume control, and is more flexible than mmkbd-evdev wrt key-combinations. At the time of filing I preferred volume control of PA sinks to the direct control of alsa devices presently offered by kmix, but this is now a minor concern. I'm guessing this is NOTABUG, but am not completely sure.
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