inputexec

This program aims to handle button/command binding for headless hosts. It captures all events from an input device (keyboard, mouse, etc.) and runs commands appropriately.

inputexec was born from the need to pass key presses from a remote control to a Music Player Daemon.

Example usage:

inputexec --action-commands=actions.ini --source-file=/dev/input/keyboard

The --action-commands file contains action to map to each keypress:

[commands]
keypress.KEY_PLAYPAUSE = mpc toggle
keypress.KEY_PREVIOUSSONG = mpc prev
keypress.KEY_NEXTSONG = mpc next
keypress.KEY_STOPCD = mpc stop

Installation

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

Distribution packages (recommended)

Use distribution-specific packages if they are available. The author knows of the following options:

• None yet

From PyPI, the Python package index

Simply run:

pip install inputexec

From source

You'll need the python-evdev library, available from PyPI (https://pypi.python.org/pypi/evdev).

Then, run:

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

Launching 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)