# How to utilize those buttons on my notebook?

## oai79

Is there a way to utilize those buttons on the notebook that was made for windows, like button to get email, suspend, etc. under linux?

I just thought it would be convenient to have them linked to other tasks that I see fit.

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## snkmoorthy

It depends on the notebook - one apporach for KDE I think there is a utility called lineak.

I use GNOME on a Compaq Presario 2700T, 1500T and 1525US. With GNOME2 there is a utility/daemon called Multimedia keys, you can assign most of them with that.

if that doesn't work out for you, you should search the net for other who have the same model laptop and get the keycodes and put them in /etc/X11/Xmodmap.

If you can't find any in the search run xev from a terminal and press the keys, you can see what keycodes are returned, write them down and put them in ~/.Xmodmap.

hope this helps.

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## oai79

Thanks, I'll try them right away

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## oai79

Here's the testing result of the methods suggested by snkmoorthy.

lineakd and acme (gnome multimedia daemon) works fine with the keyboard, but they don't work with those buttons. Also xev does not respond to those buttons either.

I don't know what others' notebooks look like. Mine is ASUS M2000E. There are four small and one large metal buttons, alongside with the metal power on/off button. xev and lineakd do not respond to them (produce no output at all when they are pressed). Are those buttons a part of keyboard or not?

Also there is a Fn (function key) that is used in combination with other keyboard elements. Some of the have outputs, but most don't. Especially function keys that is used for suspend, screen brighter, screen darker, sound up, sound down...

Is this really the dead end?

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## snkmoorthy

lineak has specific keyboards listed.

extra keys are not standard keys.

they have keycodes.

volume keys work with GNOME2.

suspend button is really ACPI, enable ACPI cat /proc/acpi/event and press Fn+suspend button see what happens, install acpid and write whatever you want done.

brightness is an issue, currently I can only change brightness before system loads with 1500 series. 2700T works always no extra setup needed.

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## oai79

Those buttons don't generate (have no) keycodes. And in my case, brightness, volumn also have no keycodes. Although Fn+suspend does not generate keycode, it is detected by acpid.

From the Fn+suspend example, there should be a way to detect the action of those buttons and Fn+xxx pressed. Any idea?

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## rum

I have the same issue with my laptop.  I found this to be my most promising lead so far:

```

*  x11-misc/hotkeys

      Latest version available: 0.5.7.1

      Latest version installed: [ Not Installed ]

      Size of downloaded files: 228 kB

      Homepage:    http://ypwong.org/hotkeys/

      Description: Make use of extra buttons on newer keyboards.

```

Sourceforge url:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/hotkeys

Ill race whoever is interested in getting this to work.  First solution to be posted wins  :Smile:   Good luck!

****----- Note.... this is gonna be interesting

The dependencies are intresting:

```

These are the packages that I would merge, in order:

Calculating dependencies ...done!

[ebuild  N   ] media-sound/esound-0.2.29  +tcpd +alsa 

[ebuild  N   ] media-libs/imlib-1.9.14-r1  

[ebuild  N   ] gnome-base/gnome-libs-1.4.2  -doc +nls +kde 

[ebuild  N   ] media-libs/gdk-pixbuf-0.21.0  -doc 

[ebuild  N   ] media-libs/libogg-1.0  

[ebuild  N   ] media-libs/libvorbis-1.0-r2  

[ebuild  N   ] app-text/sgml-common-0.6.3-r3  

[ebuild  N   ] app-text/openjade-1.3.1-r6  

[ebuild  N   ] app-text/docbook-sgml-dtd-3.0-r1  

[ebuild  N   ] app-text/docbook-xml-simple-dtd-4.1.2.4  

[ebuild  N   ] app-text/docbook-sgml-dtd-3.1-r1  

[ebuild  N   ] app-text/docbook-sgml-dtd-4.1-r1  

[ebuild  N   ] dev-perl/SGMLSpm-1.03-r4  

[ebuild  N   ] app-text/docbook-xsl-stylesheets-1.57.0  

[ebuild  N   ] app-text/docbook-xml-dtd-4.1.2-r3  

[ebuild  N   ] app-text/docbook-dsssl-stylesheets-1.77-r1  

[ebuild  N   ] app-text/docbook-sgml-dtd-4.0-r1  

[ebuild  N   ] app-text/docbook-sgml-utils-0.6.11-r2  -tetex 

[ebuild  N   ] dev-libs/libxslt-1.0.29  +python 

[ebuild  N   ] app-text/scrollkeeper-0.3.11-r1  +nls 

[ebuild  N   ] dev-libs/libxml-1.8.17-r2  

[ebuild  N   ] gnome-base/libglade-0.17-r6  +nls -bonobo 

[ebuild  N   ] gnome-base/gnome-common-1.2.4-r3  

[ebuild  N   ] dev-util/indent-2.2.9  

[ebuild  N   ] gnome-base/oaf-0.6.10  +nls 

[ebuild  N   ] dev-util/guile-1.4.1  

[ebuild  N   ] gnome-base/gconf-1.0.8-r3  +nls 

[ebuild  N   ] gnome-base/gnome-mime-data-2.2.0  

[ebuild  N   ] gnome-base/gnome-vfs-1.0.5-r3  +ssl +nls 

[ebuild  N   ] gnome-base/control-center-1.4.0.5-r1  +nls 

[ebuild  N   ] gnome-base/gnome-panel-1.4.2-r2  +kde +nls 

[ebuild  N   ] media-libs/libmikmod-3.1.10  +oss -esd +alsa 

[ebuild  N   ] media-sound/xmms-1.2.7-r20  -xml +nls -esd +gnome +opengl +mmx +o

ggvorbis +3dnow +mikmod -directfb -ipv6 -cjk 

[ebuild  N   ] x11-libs/xosd-2.1.0  +xmms 

[ebuild  N   ] x11-misc/hotkeys-0.5.7.1  

```

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## nalin

 *rum wrote:*   

> 
> 
> The dependencies are intresting

 

Its because hotkeys displays bright green output to the screen when you push buttons.

Anyone know how to change kmix volume levels from a shell?

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## kuemmel

i'm afraid hotkeys only works for keys which produce a keycode (you can check the code with xev).  the extra keys on my laptop are acpi:-(

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## glamdring

messed around the whole day trying to get those buttons on my hp-book working (after a year of using gentoo and not bothering to do so... little bit boring today   :Rolling Eyes:  )

my results:

some of them have keycodes, some of them only produce key-push-events, but no key-release-events and can therefore not be trapped by the system. there should (in my case as i own a hp-book) be a kernel module which i think is called omnibook.(k)o, but it won't compile on my system. so i mapped just the 4 buttons that generated keycodes and will try to find a better solution.

you can asign keys to volume up/volume down/mute in kmix by right-clicking onto one of the sliders and selecting "asign key" in the context-menu. worked out very fine for me

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## Lews_Therin

If you can find something that would work, I'd love to hear about it. I'm having the exact same problem.

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## SEth|

i think with acpid you can handle it..

i got also an asus laptop and it works fine

(sorry for posting so late)

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## xeonburn

I don't have xev for some reason. I was able to map my Dell multimedia keys in Gnome2 fine but is there a similar utility for KDE?

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## Archangel1

I've mapped a couple of keyboard function-keys and one (there's only one) extra button through the KDE control centre. So long as you select the right keyboard layout in there, they're picked up as XF86AudioRaiseVolume and XF86PlayMedia and that sort of thing.

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