Re: kernel 2.5.59: multiple keyboard devices

[Vojtech P. <vo...@su...>]

On Sun, Jan 26, 2003 at 09:50:11PM -0800, Wayne Whitney wrote:
> On Sat, 25 Jan 2003, Vojtech Pavlik wrote:
> 
> > On Fri, Jan 24, 2003 at 01:33:01PM -0800, Wayne Whitney wrote:
> >  
> > > P.S.  My application for this is to run a second X server, divorced
> > > from the VT system and using its own video card, keyboard and mouse,
> > > to achieve multidesktop without explicit kernel or X support.  I
> > > understand that the 2.5 ruby multidesktop support is not quite there
> > > yet.
> > 
> > Indeed, this cannot be easily done in 2.5 - the only reasonable way
> > would be to modify drivers/char/keyboard.c: connect() function to only
> > accept the PS/2 keyboard as a system keyboard by checking for the
> > dev->phys field.
> 
> Ah, thank you, that makes that easy to do.
> 
> However, looking at the XFree86 source code, I see that it assumes
> frequently that the console device provides keyboard input and can be used
> to control the VTs via ioctl()s.  Would it be difficult to create a
> secondary device which provides only the keystrokes from the secondary
> keyboard and ignores the VT ioctl()s?  Then I could modify XFree86 to to
> be able to use this alternate device as its console device fairly easily,
> I think.

I think there are already patches for this floating on the 'net.

> On a related note, is there a Input driver for XFree86 that groks the 
> linux /dev/input/eventX protocol?

Again, you may find some patches on the 'net, but there is no final one.

Maybe somebode else on this list knows?

-- 
Vojtech Pavlik
SuSE Labs