inputexec 0.2.4

Installation

inputexec is distributed under the 2-clause BSD license, and needs Python 2.6-3.3

pip install inputexec

git clone https://github.com/rbarrois/evdev.git

Launcing and configuration

inputexec uses only optional arguments; the full list is available through inputexec --help.

All options may also been read from a configuration file passed as inputexec --config /path/to/example.ini. The list of valid options for the configuration files are available through inputexec --dump-config.

Configuring actions

Finding the symbol associated with each key press may be complicated; to solve that problem, inputexec can run in print mode:

inputexec --source-file=/dev/input/event0 --action-mode=print

Now, each keypress will be displayed on stdout:

keypress.KEY_PLAYPAUSE
keypress.KEY_PREVIOUSSONG
keypress.KEY_NEXTSONG
keypress.KEY_STOPCD

Executing actions

Three action modes are available, configured through --action-mode:

• print: described above, simply print event lines to stdout

• run_sync: whenever an event occurs, the related command is called; this blocks the program

• run_async: One or more threads are started (the number is defined by --action-jobs) and commands to run are dispatched between those threads.

Input

inputexec can read from stdin, from a file or from a character device.

For stdin, simply pass --source-file=-

If another file path is provided, inputexec will look at its type and, if the file is a device node with major 13 (i.e an input device on linux), use the evdev reader. A linux input device can be opened either in shared mode (events are propagated to all other readers) or in exclusive mode; this behaviour is controlled by the --source-mode=exclusive|shared flag.

Otherwise, events will be generated from the lines of the file.

Logging and debug

inputexec provides a few options for logging, controlled by the --logging-target flag:

Syslog

With --logging-target=syslog, all messages are sent to syslog

stderr

With --logging-target=stderr, data is written to stderr

file

With --logging-target=file --logging-file=FILE, logs are appended to FILE

Logging verbosity can be adjusted through --logging-level=. The --traceback option enables dumping full (Python) stack upon exceptions.

Running as non-root daemon

By default, input devices in /dev/input can only be accessed by root:root.

Users are advised to setup a dedicated user/group for inputexec, and to give read/write to the target device to that user.

Giving access to the device is often a udev configuration task.

First, find the ID of your device; look at /dev/input/by-id and /dev/input/by-path, which provide stabler names than /dev/input/event3.

Once you’ve found your device (you may also look at lsusb, kernel logs when plugging/unplugging, etc.), you’ll need some rules for udev to find it:

$ udevadm info --attribute-walk --name=/dev/input/by-id/usb-13ec_0006-event-kbd

You’ll get lots of lines, focus on the 2-3 first blocks, and try to find attributes specific to your device; for me, this was:

SUBSYSTEMS=="input"
ATTRS{idVendor}=="13ec"
ATTRS{idProduct}=="0006"

You can now write the udev rule, for instance into /etc/udev/rules.d/80_setup_inputexec.rules:

# Include the matching attributes first (with ==), then force mode and group.
SUBSYSTEM=="input", ATTRS{idVendor}=="13ec", ATTRS{idProduct}=="0006", MODE="660", GROUP="rcinput"

Now, unplug/replug your device and check that permissions on the target /dev/input/eventX match your expectations.

Contributing, reporting issues

If you find an issue or have suggestions for improvements, feel free to contact me:

• Open an issue on GitHub

• Send me an email at raphael.barrois+inputexec@polytechnique.org

• Ping me on IRC, I’m Xelnor on irc.freenode.net

TODO

This section lists features, improvements and other ideas to implement.

• Port to BSD kernel

• Add exhaustive unit testing

• Write man page and init.d service definitions

Links

Source code and issues:

https://github.com/rbarrois/inputexec

PyPI:

http://pypi.python.org/pypi/inputexec

Documentation:

http://inputexec.readthedocs.org/en/latest (not yet)