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Author Topic: Special keys - how to? [Thinkpad X61]  (Read 2588 times)

Offline flyingfishfinger

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Special keys - how to? [Thinkpad X61]
« on: January 26, 2016, 08:29:11 PM »
Hi,
Noob alert. I'm looking to get the special keys to work on my Thinkpad X61. Sound works fine with Alsa and Alsamixer.
Things I'm missing are Volume / Mute buttons, screen brightness, Thinklight, Wifi keys.
I've installed Thinkpad-acpi (this should make them work afaik) as onboot, but it doesn't seem to have any effect.
Any ideas?
Thanks,

Rafael

Offline dentonlt

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Re: Special keys - how to? [Thinkpad X61]
« Reply #1 on: January 27, 2016, 02:14:43 AM »
'Special' keys may need to be caught and manually linked to alsa/brightness. I'm on an Acer c720 with similar challenge.

Try using xev to catch/identify key press/release codes. Then use actkbd (or something like that) to call your own volume/brightness control scripts on keypress/release.

HTH

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Offline curaga

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Re: Special keys - how to? [Thinkpad X61]
« Reply #2 on: January 27, 2016, 05:33:39 AM »
I used actkbd on a Macbook Pro to bind the brightness and volume keys. Note that xev keycodes may be different than the ones seen by actkbd, so actkbd's own detection should be used instead.
The only barriers that can stop you are the ones you create yourself.

Offline dentonlt

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Re: Special keys - how to? [Thinkpad X61]
« Reply #3 on: January 27, 2016, 06:01:57 AM »


... so actkbd's own detection should be used instead.

Totally forgot about that. I do remember locking up my computer once or more, though. Be sure you know your hard reset options ...



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Offline flyingfishfinger

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Re: Special keys - how to? [Thinkpad X61]
« Reply #4 on: January 29, 2016, 03:00:11 AM »
So with acpid I can see the volume / mute events, but not the backlight key or Thinklight events. For the ones that work, I haven't defined any rules. On the other hand, in dmesg I can see that thinkpad-acpi loads in dmesg, but defers to the built-in modules to the tune of: "This Thinkpad has standard ACPI brightness control, supported by the ACPI video driver" and "input: Thinkpad Extra buttons as /devices/platform/thinkpad_acpi/input/input7".
Also, actkbd doesn't seem to detect any of the special keys at all...
Not a whole lot of that means much to me, any clarification would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks a bunch!

R

UPDATE: Installing graphics-3.16.6-tinycore64 made the brightness hotkeys work (while trying to fix resolution). Yay! Still no volume keys.
« Last Edit: January 29, 2016, 03:25:55 AM by flyingfishfinger »

Offline curaga

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Re: Special keys - how to? [Thinkpad X61]
« Reply #5 on: January 29, 2016, 04:43:44 AM »
Did you use the thinkpad extra device for actkbd, instead of the keyboard device?
The only barriers that can stop you are the ones you create yourself.