Arkold's Blog

I think that I am not the only one who bought one of this kind of keyboards and wish to have them working under Linux, Ubuntu do it without any modification as far I know, Kubuntu too, as I know there are extra tools to do it with a GUI, but I’ll teach you how that tools work . Tested on Debian Lenny and Sid.

Requirements

• Have a keyboard with multimedia keys, as volume up & down
• Have x11-utils package installed
• Have super user access
• The K Environment
• KMix application installed

Tips

• This can work with anything that runs on the X server, but you need do extra editing, so have fun at that

We will use an application called xev that is into x11-utils, first of all, we need to know the keycode of the keys we want to configure, so we do the following thing.

$ xev

Then a window showing many text will appear, however, we click on JUST the keys we want to configure, in mine case it show off it when I clicked that keys (volume up&down). The keycodes are in bold.

The increase volume button

KeyPress event, serial 31, synthetic NO, window 0×2a00001,
root 0×8a, subw 0×0, time 1517838800, (-479,599), root:(207,626),
state 0×10, keycode 176 (keysym 0×0, NoSymbol), same_screen YES,
XLookupString gives 0 bytes:
XmbLookupString gives 0 bytes:
XFilterEvent returns: False

KeyRelease event, serial 31, synthetic NO, window 0×2a00001,
root 0×8a, subw 0×0, time 1517838951, (-479,599), root:(207,626),
state 0×10, keycode 176 (keysym 0×0, NoSymbol), same_screen YES,
XLookupString gives 0 bytes:
XFilterEvent returns: FalseKeyPress event, serial 31, synthetic NO, window 0×2a00001,

The decrease volume button

root 0×8a, subw 0×0, time 1517844324, (252,33), root:(938,60),
state 0×10, keycode 174 (keysym 0×0, NoSymbol), same_screen YES,
XLookupString gives 0 bytes:
XmbLookupString gives 0 bytes:
XFilterEvent returns: False

KeyRelease event, serial 31, synthetic NO, window 0×2a00001,
root 0×8a, subw 0×0, time 1517844482, (252,33), root:(938,60),
state 0×10, keycode 174 (keysym 0×0, NoSymbol), same_screen YES,
XLookupString gives 0 bytes:
XFilterEvent returns: False

Then we create ~/.kde/Autostart/keycodes and we put in this (editing to match with your keycodes).

#!/bin/sh
#file to map special keys.
#File location: ~/.kde/Autostart
#File Name:keycodes

xmodmap -e ‘keycode 174=F21′ #voldown
xmodmap -e ‘keycode 176=F22′ #volup

#Abrimos kmix y dejamos que xbindkeys sirva
kmix

#Se abre xbindkeys para enlazar las teclas de acceso rapido con los programas
xbindkeys

Then we edit ~/.xbindkeysrc (if it doesn’t exists, we need to create it) and we add the following lines

#Volume decrease
“dcop kmix Mixer0 decreaseVolume 0″
F21

#Volume increase
“dcop kmix Mixer0 increaseVolume 0″
F22