setkeycodes(8) — Linux manual page

SETKEYCODES(8)           System Manager's Manual          SETKEYCODES(8)

NAME

       setkeycodes - load kernel scancode-to-keycode mapping table
       entries

SYNOPSIS

       setkeycodes scancode keycode ...

DESCRIPTION

       The setkeycodes command reads its arguments two at a time, each
       pair of arguments consisting of a scancode (given in hexadecimal)
       and a keycode (given in decimal). For each such pair, it tells
       the kernel keyboard driver to map the specified scancode to the
       specified keycode.

       This command is useful only for people with slightly unusual
       keyboards, that have a few keys which produce scancodes that the
       kernel does not recognize.

THEORY

       The usual PC keyboard produces a series of scancodes for each key
       press and key release. (Scancodes are shown by showkey -s, see
       showkey(1) ) The kernel parses this stream of scancodes, and
       converts it to a stream of keycodes (key press/release events).
       (Keycodes are shown by showkey.)  Apart from a few scancodes with
       special meaning, and apart from the sequence produced by the
       Pause key, and apart from shiftstate related scancodes, and apart
       from the key up/down bit, the stream of scancodes consists of
       unescaped scancodes xx (7 bits) and escaped scancodes e0 xx (8+7
       bits).  To these scancodes or scancode pairs, a corresponding
       keycode can be assigned (in the range 1-127).  For example, if
       you have a Macro key that produces e0 6f according to showkey(1),
       the command
              setkeycodes e06f 112
       will assign the keycode 112 to it, and then loadkeys(1) can be
       used to define the function of this key.

       Some older kernels might hardwire a low scancode range to the
       equivalent keycodes; setkeycodes will fail when you try to remap
       these.

2.6 KERNELS

       In 2.6 kernels key codes lie in the range 1-255, instead of
       1-127.  (It might be best to confine oneself to the range 1-239.)

       In 2.6 kernels raw mode, or scancode mode, is not very raw at
       all.  The code returned by showkey -s will change after use of
       setkeycodes.  A kernel bug. See also showkey(1).

OPTIONS

       None.

BUGS

       The keycodes of X have nothing to do with those of Linux.
       Unusual keys can be made visible under Linux, but not under X.

SEE ALSO

       dumpkeys(1), loadkeys(1), showkey(1), getkeycodes(8)

COLOPHON

       This page is part of the kbd (Linux keyboard tools) project.
       Information about the project can be found at 
       ⟨http://www.kbd-project.org/⟩.  If you have a bug report for this
       manual page, send it to kbd@lists.altlinux.org.  This page was
       obtained from the project's upstream Git repository
       ⟨https://github.com/legionus/kbd.git⟩ on 2024-06-14.  (At that
       time, the date of the most recent commit that was found in the
       repository was 2024-05-20.)  If you discover any rendering
       problems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe there
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       (which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
       man-pages@man7.org

kbd                            8 Nov 1994                 SETKEYCODES(8)

Pages that refer to this page: showkey(1), getkeycodes(8)

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