Table of Contents

Name

kbd - Keyboard input driver

Synopsis


Section "InputDevice"
  Identifier "idevname"
  Driver "kbd"
  ...
EndSection

Description

kbd is an Xorg input driver for keyboards. The driver supports the standard OS-provided keyboard interface, but these are currently only available to this driver module for Linux, BSD, and Solaris. This driver is the replacement for the built-in keyboard driver formerly included in Xorg.

The kbd driver functions as a keyboard input device, and may be used as the X server's core keyboard.

Configuration Details

Depending on the X server version in use, input device options may be set in either a xorg.conf file, or in the configuration files read by the Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) daemon, hald(8) .

Please refer to xorg.conf(5) for general configuration details and for options that can be used with all input drivers. This section only covers configuration details specific to this driver.

The following driver Options are supported:

Option "Device" "string"
Specify the keyboard device. Default: the OS's default console keyboard input source.
Option "Protocol" "string"
Specify the keyboard protocol. Valid protocol types include:

Standard, Xqueue.

Not all protocols are supported on all platforms. Default: "Standard".
Option "XLeds" "ledlist"
makes the keyboard LEDs specified in ledlist available for client use instead of their traditional function (Scroll Lock, Caps Lock and Num Lock). The numbers in the list are in the range 1 to 3. Default: empty list.
Option "XkbRules" "rules"
specifies which XKB rules file to use for interpreting the XkbModel, XkbLayout, XkbVariant, and XkbOptions settings. Default: "xorg" for most platforms, but "xfree98" for the Japanese PC-98 platforms. If you use the "xorg" value then you can find listing of all valid values for these four options in the /usr/share/X11/xkb/rules/xorg.lst file.
Option "XkbModel" "modelname"
specifies the XKB keyboard model name. Default: "pc105" for most platforms, but "pc98" for the Japanese PC-98 platforms.
Option "XkbLayout" "layoutname"
specifies the XKB keyboard layout name. This is usually the country or language type of the keyboard. Default: "us" for most platforms, but "jp" for the Japanese PC-98 platforms.
Option "XkbVariant" "variants"
specifies the XKB keyboard variant components. These can be used to enhance the keyboard layout details. Default: not set.
Option "XkbOptions" "options"
specifies the XKB keyboard option components. These can be used to enhance the keyboard behaviour. Default: not set.

Some other XKB-related options are available, but they are incompatible with the ones listed above and are not recommended, so they are not documented here.

Example

The following xorg.conf fragment ensures that user will be able to switch between us and sk layouts by pressing the "menu" key.

The XkbVariant option defines which variants of the two layouts should be used. In case of the us layout its default variant is used. In case of the sk layout its qwerty variant is used. 


Section "InputDevice"
Identifier   "Generic Keyboard"
Driver       "kbd"
Option       "CoreKeyboard"
Option       "XkbRules"      "xorg"
Option       "XkbModel"      "pc105"
Option       "XkbLayout"     "us,sk"
Option       "XkbVariant"    ",qwerty"
Option       "XkbOptions"    "grp:menu_toggle,grp_led:scroll"
EndSection

See Also

Xorg(1) , xorg.conf(5) , Xserver(1) , X(7) .

hal(7) , hald(8) , fdi(5) .

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