SHOWKEY(1)

NAME
       showkey  - examine the scan codes and keycodes sent by the
       keyboard

SYNOPSIS
       showkey [ -hsk --help --scancodes --keycodes ]

DESCRIPTION
       showkey prints to standard output either the scan codes or
       the keycode of each key pressed. The program runs until 10
       seconds has elapsed since the last key  press  or  release
       event,  or  until  it  receives  a  suitable  signal, like
       SIGTERM, from another process.

       showkey has two modes of operation, scancode  and  keycode
       dumping,  selected  by  a command line option (see below).
       When in scancode dump mode, it prints in hexadecimal  for-
       mat  each  byte received from the keyboard to the standard
       output. A new line is printed when an  interval  of  about
       0.1 seconds occurs between the bytes received, or when the
       internal receive buffer fills up.  This  can  be  used  to
       determine  roughly, what byte sequences the keyboard sends
       at once on a given key press. The scan code  dumping  mode
       is primarily intended for debugging the keyboard driver or
       other low level interfaces. As such  it  shouldn't  be  of
       much interest to the regular end-user.

       When  in  the default keycode dump mode, showkey prints to
       the standard output the keycode number or each key pressed
       or  released.  The kind of the event, press or release, is
       also reported.  Keycodes are numbers assigned by the  ker-
       nel  to each individual physical key. Every key has always
       only one associated keycode number, whether  the  keyboard
       sends  single  or  multiple  scan  codes when pressing it.
       Using showkey in this mode, you can find out what  numbers
       to use in your personalized keymap files.

OPTIONS
       -h --help
              showkey  prints  to  the  standard error output its
              version number, a compile option and a short  usage
              message, then exits.

       -s --scancodes
              Starts showkey in scan code dump mode.

       -k --keycodes
              Starts  showkey  in  keycode dump mode. This is the
              default, when no command line options are  present.

BUGS
       A  kernel  bug (still present in version 0.99pl14m) causes
       key releases to be reported as key presses (when  in  key-
       code dump mode).

SEE ALSO
       loadkeys(1) dumpkeys(1) keytables(5)