[ltp] T61: no power button key event when using evdev driver / HAL for keyboard configuration

[Marius Gedminas]

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On Mon, Dec 15, 2008 at 01:18:35AM +0100, Jens Rutschmann wrote:
> Marius Gedminas wrote on 13.12.2008 12:05:
>> This sounds familiar.
>>
>> Thinkfinger, a driver for the fingerprint scanner in ThinkPads, creates
>> a virtual uinput device to simulate the press of Enter after you swipe a
>> finger.  HAL classifies that device as a button rather than a keyboard
>> because it has only one key in its input mask, and, apparently, X or
>> evdev then ignores it.
>> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/thinkfinger/+bug/256429/commen=
ts/29
>
> Do you think that the power button device isn't reported (by HAL) as=20
> input device to xorg because it only contains a single key?

That seems likely.

I'm not really knowledgeable in these matters.  I lurk on the xorg@
mailing list and read about the developments on the X.org input front,
because they seem interesting.  AFAIU what happens is that the kernel
reports a bunch of input devices, HAL identifies them and applies extra
properties from FDI files, and then X.org picks those that have a
'input.x11_driver' input property.

  $ lshal|grep input|grep -e 'x11\|product\|driver\|capabilities'

on my Thinkpad shows that the power button lacks 'input.x11_driver'.
(Also, hey, since when is 'PC Speaker' an input device?)

You can probably play with FDI files in /usr/share/hal (or /etc/hal) and
make the power button appear as a keyboard for X.org.  On my Ubuntu
system it's /usr/share/hal/fdi/policy/10osvendor/10-x11-input.fdi that
does this for mice and regular keyboards.

> Seems to confirm this assumption. Is there already a respective bug=20
> report for HAL or xorg that I can use to track that issue?

I don't know of any, and a quick search in http://bugs.freedesktop.org/
found nothing.  I don't think I understand this issue enough to file
one.  Are "button" devices supposed to be treated as keyboards by X.org?

Marius Gedminas
--=20
Those parts of the system that you can hit with a hammer (not advised)
are called hardware; those program instructions that you can only curse
at are called software.
                -- Levitating Trains and Kamikaze Genes: Technological
                   Literacy for the 1990's.

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