Ubuntu keyboard detection from bash script

bashkeyboardUbuntu

Excuse my ignorance of linux OS/hardware issues…I'm just a programmer 🙂

I have an application that calls out to some bash scripts to launch external applications, in this case Firefox. The application runs on a kiosk with touch screen capability. When launching Firefox, I also launch a virtual keyboard application that allows the user to have keyboard input.

However, the kiosk also has both PS/2 and USB slots that would allow a user to plug in a keyboard. If a keyboard were plugged in, it would be nice if I didn't have to launch the virtual keyboard and provide more screen space for the Firefox window.

Is there a way for me to detect if a keyboard is plugged in from the bash script? Would it show up in /dev, and if so, would it show up at a consistent location? Would it make a difference if the user used a PS/2 or USB keyboard?

Thanks!

Best Answer

For a USB device you can use lsusb and search for a Human Interface Device (interface class 3) with keyboard protocol (interface protocol 1), e.g.

$ lsusb -v
... loads of stuff deleted ...
    Interface Descriptor:
      bLength                 9
      bDescriptorType         4
      bInterfaceNumber        0
      bAlternateSetting       0
      bNumEndpoints           1
      bInterfaceClass         3 Human Interface Device
      bInterfaceSubClass      1 Boot Interface Subclass
      bInterfaceProtocol      1 Keyboard
      iInterface              0 
... loads of stuff deleted ...

Also, you can let udev help you. List the devices under /dev/input/by-path/ and the keyboard devices end in -kdb (at least in Ubuntu, where udev rules specify it), e.g.

$ ls -l /dev/input/by-path/*-kbd
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 9 2010-03-25 09:14 /dev/input/by-path/pci-0000:00:1a.2-usb-0:1:1.0-event-kbd -> ../event4

$ ls -l /dev/input/by-path/*-kbd
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 9 2009-08-29 09:46 /dev/input/by-path/platform-i8042-serio-0-event-kbd -> ../event1
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