Ubuntu – Some keys are not detected in the keyboard (multimedia keys?) by either xev or xbindkeys or keytouch: how to detect them

dconflubuntuopenboxxbindkeysxev

It is one more attempt to get Fn keys to volume up/down, brightness, etc. working. Those controls are simply not working in my non-branded ultrabook.

I want to detect them to modify /home/username/.config/openbox/lubuntu-rc.xml, as the following doesn't seem working:

<keybind key="XF86AudioRaiseVolume">
    <action name="Execute">
        <command>amixer -q sset Master 3%+ unmute</command>

Neither xev nor xbindkeys nor keytouch are detecting when I press volumen up or brightness down, for example. The start/stop touchpad button is working, but is not detected by those applications either.

I also tried with dconf-editor as it is suggested here. next was already set to XF86AudioNext (and it is active)

Here, I read the following explanation:

Some laptop Fn key combinations are multimedia keys
(appearing to the OS as ordinary keys with nonstandard codes), while
others trigger ACPI events that eventually reach the OS, and some are
just handled by the BIOS and never seen by the OS. The information
paths are explained on the
Hotkeys/Architecture
page on the Ubuntu wiki, complete with diagrams.

If the OS can't see anything when you press the brightness keys, it
could be because they're handled directly by the BIOS. The battle is
not completely lost — it is in principle possible to hack the BIOS —
but the difficulty level is considerably raised.

Any idea?

Best Answer

You may need acpi support

sudo apt-get install acpi acpi-support acpica-tools acpid acpidump acpitail acpitool libacpi0 laptop-detect pommed

Beyond installing the above packages, I finally fixed this issue on my laptop by uninstalling the toshet package after discovering my specific model was not compatible or supported by the toshet application. I doubt you have toshet installed but you can check to see by typing the following command:

dpkg -l | grep toshet

There should be no output if toshet is not installed. If it is listed in the subsequent output of that command, you can uninstall it by typing the following:

sudo apt-get purge toshet
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