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I need to perform a command when I connect a bluetooth keyboard. How can I 'listen' this event?

Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
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deprecated
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2 Answers2

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When a piece of hardware is plugged in, the udev framework decides what to do with it. A typical action is to create a device node under /dev, but you can run any shell command.

First, you need to figure out how to identify your device. Connect the keyboard and run udevadm info -a -n /dev/input/event9 where the last argument is the path to the device file in /dev/ corresponding to your device. You can omit the /dev/ prefix. You can use a syspath (a path under /sys) instead of a device node name by replacing -n … by -p class/input/event9. In all cases, replace input/event9 by the appropriate path for your device. This prints various characteristics of your device. Collect one or more of the lines of the form SETTING=="VALUE", enough to identify your device uniquely.

Create a file under /etc/udev/rules.d called vemv-keyboard.rules or some such. Put a line in this file with the settings to be matched and an action to run. Take care to use the proper operators: it's == for properties to be matched, = for properties to be set, and += to specify additional actions. Something like:

# Run a program when my wireless keyboard is connected
SUBSYSTEMS=="input", ATTRS{vendor}=="Yoyodene", ATTRS{model}=="Bluetooth keyboard 9000", RUN+="/path/to/script $root/$name"

The program will run the next time you plug the device in (adding the file has no effect on already-connected devices). You check that your rule would have the desired effect by running udevadm test class/input/event9 (where the argument is the syspath as above). If you want to apply the rule manually, run udevadm trigger --sysname=class/input/event9.

Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
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    While your answer looks excellent I've had no luck getting it to work :( here are my inputs/outputs: https://gist.github.com/vemv/5275029 – deprecated Mar 30 '13 at 02:28
  • @vemv You need to use the absolute path of the script. I can't see why ATTRS{name}=="Apple Wireless Keyboard", RUN+="/home/vemv/bin/myscript" didn't work though. – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil' Mar 30 '13 at 02:37
  • All the files listed when running udevadm test class/input/event9 start with two digits. Could that have something to do? – deprecated Mar 30 '13 at 02:40
  • @vemv No, that's not a problem, and the output from udevadm test shows that your rules were read. The rules files are read in lexicographic order, the ones that begin with a digit are read before the ones that begin with a letter. – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil' Mar 30 '13 at 02:43
  • Can you try to just RUN+="/path/to/a/script" without any arguments and see if you can get udev to actually run a script of yours? It shouldn't make any difference, but I recall having a hard time to make my rules work. I ended up doing some logic in my script, which udev could have done just as well. – Bananguin Mar 30 '13 at 19:18
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Looks like running udevadm monitor is a good basis for solving my problem. One can have a daemon parsing its output, filtering the desired entries, and reacting to those events.

deprecated
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    There is such a daemon. It's called udevd. You configure it with "rules", which are stored in /etc/udev/. It comes with a man page too. – Bananguin Mar 29 '13 at 23:22
  • Thanks for the heads up! Sounds like your pointer is going to save me a lot of work :) – deprecated Mar 29 '13 at 23:30