Skip to content

input: correctly handle keys without hardware release event

Giel de Nijs linux-input lkml 1 version In review

Get series with b4
b4 am [email protected]

Versions newest first

  1. v1 Latest2 patches 2 repliesIn review

Patches in v1 No applies recorded yet

#Subject and filesSizeRepliesApplied
1/2input: add soft release key mask to keyboard driverdrivers/input/keyboard/atkbd.c include/linux/input.h+12 -80 replies
2/2input: add ioctls to console for soft release mask read/writedrivers/char/keyboard.c drivers/char/vt_ioctl.c include/linux/compat_ioctl.h +2 more+91 -110 replies

Reviews trailers per patch

No Reviewed-by, Acked-by or Tested-by trailers for v1 yet.

Read the v1 thread

Cover letter [patch 0/2] [PATCH] input: correctly handle keys without hardware release event

Hi,

This patch adds a soft release key mask to input_dev, to enable keyboard drivers to determine which keys never generate a hardware release event and hence add a release event after every press event of such keys. The mask is controlled by ioctls.

The Fn+F? key combinations of Dell Latitude series laptops (and possibly other Dells or other brands) only generate a key press event and never a key release event, which is most probable a hardware flaw (or feature?). Due to this flaw, combinations like Fn+F1 for hibernate and Fn-F3 for showing battery status cannot be used. Ubuntu has probably fixed this by patching the X input layer and HAL, but other distributions (like Debian) cannot use these keys. This patch adds a generic method to signal if keys with certain scancodes never generate release events, so the keyboard driver can add those events right after a key press event.

The ioctls used to read and write to this bitmask might be used in a program like setkeycodes, which is normally used to map certain scancodes to keycodes. With a command line option, this program could also set the soft release bit for a certain scancode if desired. Patches for setkeycodes and getkeycodes against the Debian console-tools can be found at
http://giel.operation0.org/keyboard-soft-release

This patch also uses the infrastructure for generating release events for KEY_HANGEUL and KEY_HANJA, something which was already done in atkbd.c.

See also this thread: http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel/401378

Greetings,
Giel

Read the cover letter in its thread