.. include:: <isonum.txt>
-===================
-Linux Input drivers
-===================
+============
+Introduction
+============
:Copyright: |copy| 1999-2001 Vojtech Pavlik <vojtech@ucw.cz> - Sponsored by SuSE
-Should you need to contact me, the author, you can do so either by e-mail
-- mail your message to <vojtech@ucw.cz>, or by paper mail: Vojtech Pavlik,
-Simunkova 1594, Prague 8, 182 00 Czech Republic
-
-Introduction
+Architecture
============
-This is a collection of drivers that is designed to support all input
-devices under Linux. While it is currently used only on for USB input
-devices, future use (say 2.5/2.6) is expected to expand to replace
-most of the existing input system, which is why it lives in
-drivers/input/ instead of drivers/usb/.
+Input subsystem a collection of drivers that is designed to support
+all input devices under Linux. Most of the drivers reside in
+drivers/input, although quite a few live in drivers/hid and
+drivers/platform.
-The centre of the input drivers is the input module, which must be
+The core of the input subsystem is the input module, which must be
loaded before any other of the input modules - it serves as a way of
communication between two groups of modules:
Event handlers
--------------
-These modules get events from input and pass them where needed via
-various interfaces - keystrokes to the kernel, mouse movements via a
-simulated PS/2 interface to GPM and X and so on.
+These modules get events from input core and pass them where needed
+via various interfaces - keystrokes to the kernel, mouse movements via
+a simulated PS/2 interface to GPM and X, and so on.
Simple Usage
============
input
mousedev
- keybdev
usbcore
uhci_hcd or ohci_hcd or ehci_hcd
usbhid
+ hid_generic
After this, the USB keyboard will work straight away, and the USB mouse
will be available as a character device on major 13, minor 63::
crw-r--r-- 1 root root 13, 63 Mar 28 22:45 mice
-This device has to be created.
-
-The commands to create it by hand are::
+This device usually created automatically by the system. The commands
+to create it by hand are::
cd /dev
mkdir input
Detailed Description
====================
-Device drivers
+Event handlers
--------------
-Device drivers are the modules that generate events. The events are
-however not useful without being handled, so you also will need to use some
-of the modules from section 3.2.
-
-usbhid
-~~~~~~
-
-usbhid is the largest and most complex driver of the whole suite. It
-handles all HID devices, and because there is a very wide variety of them,
-and because the USB HID specification isn't simple, it needs to be this big.
-
-Currently, it handles USB mice, joysticks, gamepads, steering wheels
-keyboards, trackballs and digitizers.
-
-However, USB uses HID also for monitor controls, speaker controls, UPSs,
-LCDs and many other purposes.
-
-The monitor and speaker controls should be easy to add to the hid/input
-interface, but for the UPSs and LCDs it doesn't make much sense. For this,
-the hiddev interface was designed. See Documentation/hid/hiddev.txt
-for more information about it.
-
-The usage of the usbhid module is very simple, it takes no parameters,
-detects everything automatically and when a HID device is inserted, it
-detects it appropriately.
-
-However, because the devices vary wildly, you might happen to have a
-device that doesn't work well. In that case #define DEBUG at the beginning
-of hid-core.c and send me the syslog traces.
+Event handlers distribute the events from the devices to userspace and
+in-kernel consumers, as needed.
-usbmouse
-~~~~~~~~
-
-For embedded systems, for mice with broken HID descriptors and just any
-other use when the big usbhid wouldn't be a good choice, there is the
-usbmouse driver. It handles USB mice only. It uses a simpler HIDBP
-protocol. This also means the mice must support this simpler protocol. Not
-all do. If you don't have any strong reason to use this module, use usbhid
-instead.
-
-usbkbd
-~~~~~~
-
-Much like usbmouse, this module talks to keyboards with a simplified
-HIDBP protocol. It's smaller, but doesn't support any extra special keys.
-Use usbhid instead if there isn't any special reason to use this.
-
-wacom
+evdev
~~~~~
-This is a driver for Wacom Graphire and Intuos tablets. Not for Wacom
-PenPartner, that one is handled by the HID driver. Although the Intuos and
-Graphire tablets claim that they are HID tablets as well, they are not and
-thus need this specific driver.
+``evdev`` is the generic input event interface. It passes the events
+generated in the kernel straight to the program, with timestamps. The
+event codes are the same on all architectures and are hardware
+independent.
-iforce
-~~~~~~
+This is the preferred interface for userspace to consume user
+input, and all clients are encouraged to use it.
-A driver for I-Force joysticks and wheels, both over USB and RS232.
-It includes ForceFeedback support now, even though Immersion
-Corp. considers the protocol a trade secret and won't disclose a word
-about it.
+See :ref:`event-interface` for notes on API.
-Event handlers
---------------
+The devices are in /dev/input::
-Event handlers distribute the events from the devices to userland and
-kernel, as needed.
+ crw-r--r-- 1 root root 13, 64 Apr 1 10:49 event0
+ crw-r--r-- 1 root root 13, 65 Apr 1 10:50 event1
+ crw-r--r-- 1 root root 13, 66 Apr 1 10:50 event2
+ crw-r--r-- 1 root root 13, 67 Apr 1 10:50 event3
+ ...
-keybdev
-~~~~~~~
+There are two ranges of minors: 64 through 95 is the static legacy
+range. If there are more than 32 input devices in a system, additional
+evdev nodes are created with minors starting with 256.
-keybdev is currently a rather ugly hack that translates the input
-events into architecture-specific keyboard raw mode (Xlated AT Set2 on
-x86), and passes them into the handle_scancode function of the
-keyboard.c module. This works well enough on all architectures that
-keybdev can generate rawmode on, other architectures can be added to
-it.
+keyboard
+~~~~~~~~
-The right way would be to pass the events to keyboard.c directly,
-best if keyboard.c would itself be an event handler. This is done in
-the input patch, available on the webpage mentioned below.
+``keyboard`` is in-kernel input handler ad is a part of VT code. It
+consumes keyboard keystrokes and handles user input for VT consoles.
mousedev
~~~~~~~~
-mousedev is also a hack to make programs that use mouse input
+``mousedev`` is a hack to make legacy programs that use mouse input
work. It takes events from either mice or digitizers/tablets and makes
a PS/2-style (a la /dev/psaux) mouse device available to the
-userland. Ideally, the programs could use a more reasonable interface,
-for example evdev
+userland.
Mousedev devices in /dev/input (as shown above) are::
Each ``mouse`` device is assigned to a single mouse or digitizer, except
the last one - ``mice``. This single character device is shared by all
mice and digitizers, and even if none are connected, the device is
-present. This is useful for hotplugging USB mice, so that programs
-can open the device even when no mice are present.
+present. This is useful for hotplugging USB mice, so that older programs
+that do not handle hotplug can open the device even when no mice are
+present.
CONFIG_INPUT_MOUSEDEV_SCREEN_[XY] in the kernel configuration are
the size of your screen (in pixels) in XFree86. This is needed if you
joydev
~~~~~~
-Joydev implements v0.x and v1.x Linux joystick api, much like
-drivers/char/joystick/joystick.c used to in earlier versions. See
-joystick-api.txt in the Documentation subdirectory for details. As
-soon as any joystick is connected, it can be accessed in /dev/input
-on::
+``joydev`` implements v0.x and v1.x Linux joystick API. See
+:ref:`joystick-api` for details.
+
+As soon as any joystick is connected, it can be accessed in /dev/input on::
crw-r--r-- 1 root root 13, 0 Apr 1 10:50 js0
crw-r--r-- 1 root root 13, 1 Apr 1 10:50 js1
crw-r--r-- 1 root root 13, 3 Apr 1 10:50 js3
...
-And so on up to js31.
+And so on up to js31 in legacy range, and additional nodes with minors
+above 256 if there are more joystick devices.
-evdev
-~~~~~
+Device drivers
+--------------
-evdev is the generic input event interface. It passes the events
-generated in the kernel straight to the program, with timestamps. The
-API is still evolving, but should be usable now. It's described in
-section 5.
+Device drivers are the modules that generate events.
-This should be the way for GPM and X to get keyboard and mouse
-events. It allows for multihead in X without any specific multihead
-kernel support. The event codes are the same on all architectures and
-are hardware independent.
+hid-generic
+~~~~~~~~~~~
-The devices are in /dev/input::
+``hid-generic`` is one of the largest and most complex driver of the
+whole suite. It handles all HID devices, and because there is a very
+wide variety of them, and because the USB HID specification isn't
+simple, it needs to be this big.
- crw-r--r-- 1 root root 13, 64 Apr 1 10:49 event0
- crw-r--r-- 1 root root 13, 65 Apr 1 10:50 event1
- crw-r--r-- 1 root root 13, 66 Apr 1 10:50 event2
- crw-r--r-- 1 root root 13, 67 Apr 1 10:50 event3
- ...
+Currently, it handles USB mice, joysticks, gamepads, steering wheels
+keyboards, trackballs and digitizers.
+
+However, USB uses HID also for monitor controls, speaker controls, UPSs,
+LCDs and many other purposes.
+
+The monitor and speaker controls should be easy to add to the hid/input
+interface, but for the UPSs and LCDs it doesn't make much sense. For this,
+the hiddev interface was designed. See Documentation/hid/hiddev.txt
+for more information about it.
+
+The usage of the usbhid module is very simple, it takes no parameters,
+detects everything automatically and when a HID device is inserted, it
+detects it appropriately.
-And so on up to event31.
+However, because the devices vary wildly, you might happen to have a
+device that doesn't work well. In that case #define DEBUG at the beginning
+of hid-core.c and send me the syslog traces.
+
+usbmouse
+~~~~~~~~
+
+For embedded systems, for mice with broken HID descriptors and just any
+other use when the big usbhid wouldn't be a good choice, there is the
+usbmouse driver. It handles USB mice only. It uses a simpler HIDBP
+protocol. This also means the mice must support this simpler protocol. Not
+all do. If you don't have any strong reason to use this module, use usbhid
+instead.
+
+usbkbd
+~~~~~~
+
+Much like usbmouse, this module talks to keyboards with a simplified
+HIDBP protocol. It's smaller, but doesn't support any extra special keys.
+Use usbhid instead if there isn't any special reason to use this.
+
+psmouse
+~~~~~~~
+
+This is driver for all flavors of pointing devices using PS/2
+protocol, including Synaptics and ALPS touchpads, Intellimouse
+Explorer devices, Logitech PS/2 mice and so on.
+
+atkbd
+~~~~~
+
+This is driver for PS/2 (AT) keyboards.
+
+iforce
+~~~~~~
+
+A driver for I-Force joysticks and wheels, both over USB and RS232.
+It includes Force Feedback support now, even though Immersion
+Corp. considers the protocol a trade secret and won't disclose a word
+about it.
Verifying if it works
=====================
Typing a couple keys on the keyboard should be enough to check that
-a USB keyboard works and is correctly connected to the kernel keyboard
+a keyboard works and is correctly connected to the kernel keyboard
driver.
Doing a ``cat /dev/input/mouse0`` (c, 13, 32) will verify that a mouse
is also emulated; characters should appear if you move it.
You can test the joystick emulation with the ``jstest`` utility,
-available in the joystick package (see Documentation/input/joystick.txt).
+available in the joystick package (see :ref:`joystick-doc`).
-You can test the event devices with the ``evtest`` utility available
-in the LinuxConsole project CVS archive (see the URL below).
+You can test the event devices with the ``evtest`` utility.
+
+.. _event-interface:
Event interface
===============
-Should you want to add event device support into any application (X, gpm,
-svgalib ...) I <vojtech@ucw.cz> will be happy to provide you any help I
-can. Here goes a description of the current state of things, which is going
-to be extended, but not changed incompatibly as time goes:
-
-You can use blocking and nonblocking reads, also select() on the
+You can use blocking and nonblocking reads, and also select() on the
/dev/input/eventX devices, and you'll always get a whole number of input
events on a read. Their layout is::
``value`` is the value the event carries. Either a relative change for
EV_REL, absolute new value for EV_ABS (joysticks ...), or 0 for EV_KEY for
release, 1 for keypress and 2 for autorepeat.
+
+See :ref:`input-event-codes` for more information about various even codes.
projects / karo-tx-linux.git / commitdiff