PiBox » launcher

I added a test configuration with pc104 to a conf file for X.org, but that didn't change anything. The X.org.log shows the configuration was accepted, however.

I tested with evtest using both the Sino Wealth and Favi keyboards. evtest reports key left and key right the same way and correctly. So the problem is something else.

Okay, I added debug code to see what keyval was being presented (because it was showing "NULL" when translated to GDK) and now it just works. Can't seem to get it to fail again.

I'll keep trying it with different models and reboots. Maybe this is an intermittent problem? Or maybe I just fixed it with the icon pre-scaling/color icons fixes?

Tried it on a RPi2 this time. The Sino keyboard only was plugged in and didn't work. Added X.org config and rebooted. Still didn't work.
Plugged in the Favi keyboard. Neither worked.
Rebooted. Both keyboards worked.
Removed Favi keyboard. Rebooted. Sino keyboard doesn't work.

1. Remove the favi keyboard config.
2. Add setxkbmap to xinitrc without the favi config.

So this will work to handle plug events for new keyboards.

• Change /etc/mdev.conf from
  

  input/event[0-9]*   root:root 644   */lib/mdev/inputdev
  

  
  to
  

  input/event[0-9]*   root:root 640   @/usr/bin/keyboard.sh
  

• /usr/bin/keyboard.sh should call the script that loads the xmodmaps (see previous comment on this issue) and make use of the following env vars passed from mdev
  

      ACTION      = add
      SEQNUM      = 939
      MAJOR       = 13
      MDEV        = input/event0
      DEVPATH     = /devices/platform/soc/3f980000.usb/usb1/1-1/1-1.2/1-1.2:1.0/0003:258A:0001.0005/input/input7/event0
      DEVNAME     = input/event0
      SUBSYSTEM   = input
      MINOR       = 64
      PHYSDEVPATH = 
      PHYSDEVBUS  = 
      PWD         = /dev
  

  
  The important one is extracting the usb id from DEVPATH, which are in reverse order:

ids="$(echo ${DEVPATH} | cut -f10 -d"/")" 
echo "USB ID: $(echo ${ids} | cut -f2 -d":"):$(echo ${ids}|cut -f1 -d":")" 

Another important issue is that the shell script can be called repeatedly with no guarantee that the first call completes before the second is made. I'll need a way to serialize this.

One final thing: the script can be called multiple times (multiple input/event* devices from a single keyboard). The script should be run each time but rather only once since the same USB IDs are used for each input event.

Update¶

• The first step in this is to make sure that an mdev event can update the X server. The xmodmap frontend needs to set DISPLAY=unix:0.0 before calling the xmodmap backend script for the given usb id pair.
  • Just write the front end as a script and call it from /usr/bin/keyboard.sh on plug event for a keyboard and see if the arrow keys work. If so, then setting DISPLAY is all that's required.
• Serializing could be done by having piboxd run the xmodmap frontend script. /usr/bin/keyboard.sh uses nc to send a new message type, MT_KEYBOARD, that causes piboxd to run the xmodmap front end.
• piboxd can read /etc/X11/kdb/active to see if the usb id pair has already been run, skipping the mdev event if it has.

1. keyboard.sh - called via mdev to send a pibox protocol message (MT_SYS, MA_KEYB) to piboxd.
2. keyboard-fe.sh - called by piboxd and xinitrc to configured keyboard arrow keys.

I've also added the code to piboxd to handle this new message type and added the new MA_KEYB action for MA_SYS to libpibox:pmsg.h.

Now I need to rebuild libpibox in the dev platform, then I can build piboxd. The former will require rebuilding the SD card so I'll just push a new version of piboxd with that. Since the shell scripts are in pmsui I'll also build and push a new version of that for testing.

• Test compile libpibox
• Push libpibox
• Rebuild dev platform w/updated libpibox
• Build piboxd
• Build pmsui
• Rebuild SD card
• Push meta to SD card
• Push piboxd to SD card
• Push pmsui to SD card

Assuming this works then I should update the wiki with the new MA_KEYB action so I don't forget it later.

I'm still not happy with this solution - Xorg should really be doing this. Terminals recognize arrow keys. I'm not sure why Xorg doesn't.

Change to mdev.conf pushed. Still needs a hardware test but I have little doubt it will work because I made the same change manually and it worked.