Xfbdev grabs control of the keyboard

[Ersin Akinci]

Seems like I'm talking to myself at this point, but I keep sending replies
so that at least my efforts get archived.

I managed to work around my problem by downgrading to kdrive 1.2 after
having read somewhere on the OpenEmbedded mailing list that kdrive 1.4
onwards doesn't ship with a "default keymap".  I'm not sure what that means
exactly, but I think there must be other differences between the versions
that are preventing the keyboard from working properly, because when I start
Xfbdev 1.2 the keyboard is "grabbed" the same way that it was with 1.5.1.
Only after I run xmodmap does the keyboard work again, but xmodmap wasn't
working at all before so I consider this somewhat of a success.

Anyway, even though it works kdrive's performance is abysmal, and I'm moving
on to trying XDirectFB, though without any success.  I was surprised to
learn that xorg 1.6.3.901 builds statically with make LDFLAGS=-all-static
after someone turned me away from the IRC channel claiming that it wasn't
"supported" since 6.7.  I'm guessing that that person was referring to the
monolithic build.  If XDirectFB doesn't work out, I may very well try a
statically linked Xorg and accept the modular cruft, assuming of course that
Xorg's performance will be better than kdrive.

-Ersin

P.S.: For anyone who cares, I've been using a Toshiba Satellite Pro 420CDT
(PC-104 AT laptop keyboard).

On Wed, Apr 21, 2010 at 5:01 AM, Ersin Akinci <ersin.akinci at gmail.com>wrote:

> The saga continues...
>
> I wrote a small script to start Xfbdev and sleep before starting xterm and
> xev, and the results are interesting.  xev shows that Xfbdev is clearly
> getting my keyboard input and all the keysyms, keymaps, etc. are correct.
> However, when I try to type into xterm nothing shows up _unless_ I turn on
> num lock and type using the keypad.  Of course, this means that only the
> keypad works.  Any reason why this may be?  My gut instinct tells me that
> this is not an Xfbdev-specific problem, but rather something having to do
> with different keymaps or other configurations within xkb.
>
> Thanks,
> Ersin
>
> P.S.: I mistakenly sent another related e-mail to the list about xkbcomp,
> please ignore that.  (I managed to solve that problem; in case anyone was
> curious, I didn't have an XkeysymsDB file installed).
>
>
> On Mon, Apr 19, 2010 at 4:21 PM, Ersin Akinci <ersin.akinci at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> Hi everyone,
>>
>> I'm trying to use Xfbdev and I've run into a problem with the keyboard.
>> When I start X with
>>
>> Xfbdev -ac -mouse mouse -keybd keyboard
>>
>> X successfully grabs my keyboard but then doesn't seem to let it go.  That
>> is, I can't switch to my virtual terminals with alt+f1, etc.  I'm not using
>> any xorg.conf file or any xkb stuff at all.  It's just Xfbdev and the
>> minimum required font files.
>>
>> I would also greatly appreciate if someone could explain kdrive's input
>> mechanisms.  I've read that Xorg now uses the evdev driver, but all the
>> kdrive stuff I've found seems to indicate that it still uses the old
>> keyboard driver.  How does it "know" what keyboard I'm using without xkb?
>> Is this somehow related to "xinput"?
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Ersin
>>
>> --
>> What Digital Revolution? -- www.whatdigitalrevolution.com
>> Thinking critically about digital worlds.
>>
>
>
>
> --
> What Digital Revolution? -- www.whatdigitalrevolution.com
> Thinking critically about digital worlds.
>



-- 
What Digital Revolution? -- www.whatdigitalrevolution.com
Thinking critically about digital worlds.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.x.org/archives/xorg/attachments/20100424/871027ae/attachment.html>