How to get special keys to work
Overview
| key | standard function | tools supporting key1 | configurability2 | remarks |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fn | - | xmodmap, tpb | full | on release without completed key combination |
| FnF1 | - | ibm-acpi | full | |
| FnF2 | lock screen | ibm-acpi | full | in models from T/X/Z 60 onwards |
| FnF3 | blank screen | ibm-acpi, thinkpad-acpi | full | |
| FnF4 | suspend to ram | ibm-acpi, thinkpad-acpi | full | may generate ACPI event when not enabled in the ibm-acpi hotkey mask |
| FnF5 | switch bluetooth | ibm-acpi, thinkpad-acpi | full | in models starting from 2002 |
| FnF6 | - | ibm-acpi | full | |
| FnF7 | switch display | ibm-acpi, thinkpad-acpi, tpb | additional actions | |
| FnF8 | toggle display expansion | ibm-acpi, thinkpad-acpi, tpb | additional actions | |
| FnF9 | eject from dock | ibm-acpi, thinkpad-acpi | full | |
| FnF10 | - | ibm-acpi | full | |
| FnF11 | - | ibm-acpi | full | |
| FnF12 | hibernate | ibm-acpi, thinkpad-acpi | full | may generate ACPI event when not enabled in the ibm-acpi hotkey mask |
| FnPos1 | brightness up | ibm-acpi, tpb | additional actions | |
| FnEnd | brightness down | tpb | additional actions | |
| FnPageUp | toggle thinklight | tpb | additional actions | |
| FnSpace | toggle zoom | tpb | full | |
| FnIns | - | ibm-acpi | full | |
| FnDel | - | ibm-acpi | full | |
| FnBackspace | - | ibm-acpi | full | |
| NumLock | - | xmodmap | make working | |
| Windows | - | xmodmap | remapping | |
| Access IBM or ThinkPad | help application | tpb | full | |
| Home | open web browser | xmodmap, tpb | full | only A30, A30p, A31, A31p and ext. keyboards |
| Search | open search application | xmodmap, tpb | full | only A30, A30p, A31, A31p and ext. keyboards |
| open mail application | xmodmap, tpb | full | only A30, A30p, A31, A31p and ext. keyboards | |
| Favorites | open favorites | xmodmap, tpb | full | only A30, A30p, A31, A31p and ext. keyboards |
| Reload | reload web page | xmodmap, tpb | full | only A30, A30p, A31, A31p and ext. keyboards |
| Abort | abort loading page | xmodmap, tpb | full | only A30, A30p, A31, A31p and ext. keyboards |
| Backward | previous page | xmodmap, tpb | full | ext. keyboards and ThinkPads starting from 2002 |
| Forward | next page | xmodmap, tpb | full | ext. keyboards and ThinkPads starting from 2002 |
| Volume up | volume up | tpb | additional actions | |
| Volume down | volume down | tpb | additional actions | |
| Volume mute | mute volume | tpb | additional actions | |
| Power | shutdown | ibm-acpi | full | triggered on pressing 3secs, but notebook goes off on 5sec press |
| Display lid | blank screen | ibm-acpi | full | |
| Ultrabay lid | announce ultrabay change | ibm-acpi | full | |
| Dock eject | eject from dock | ibm-acpi | full | |
| Tablet power | shutdown | ibm-acpi | full | triggered on pressing 3secs, but notebook goes off on 5sec press |
| Tablet orientation | rotates screen | setkeycodes | full | |
| Tablet shortcut | shortcut menu | setkeycodes | full | |
| Tablet Esc | esc key | setkeycodes | full | |
| Tablet Enter | enter key | setkeycodes | full | |
| Tablet Up | up key | setkeycodes | full | |
| Tablet Down | down key | setkeycodes | full | |
| Tablet (unlabeled) | down key | setkeycodes | full |
Triggering key events
ibm-acpi events
Some of the following events require a # echo enable,0xffff >/proc/acpi/ibm/hotkey in order to make acpi able to get information on them. These events can be used to configure acpid.
| key | event |
|---|---|
| FnF1 | ibm/hotkey HKEY 00000080 00001001 |
| FnF2 | ibm/hotkey HKEY 00000080 00001002 |
| FnF3 | ibm/hotkey HKEY 00000080 00001003 |
| FnF4 | ibm/hotkey HKEY 00000080 00001004 |
| FnF5 | ibm/hotkey HKEY 00000080 00001005 |
| FnF6 | ibm/hotkey HKEY 00000080 00001006 |
| FnF7 | ibm/hotkey HKEY 00000080 00001007 |
| FnF8 | ibm/hotkey HKEY 00000080 00001008 |
| FnF9 | ibm/hotkey HKEY 00000080 00001009 |
| FnF10 | ibm/hotkey HKEY 00000080 0000100a |
| FnF11 | ibm/hotkey HKEY 00000080 0000100b |
| FnF12 | ibm/hotkey HKEY 00000080 0000100c |
| FnBackspace | ibm/hotkey HKEY 00000080 0000100d |
| FnIns | ibm/hotkey HKEY 00000080 0000100e |
| FnDel | ibm/hotkey HKEY 00000080 0000100f |
| FnPos1 | ibm/hotkey HKEY 00000080 00001010 |
| Power | button/power PWRF 00000080 xxxxxxxx |
| Display lid | button/lid LID 00000080 xxxxxxxx |
| Ultrabay eject | ibm/bay MSTR 00000003 00000000 |
| Ultrabay inserted | ibm/bay MSTR 00000001 00000000 |
| Dock eject | ibm/dock GDCK 00000003 00000001 |
Pure ACPI events
A few keys can generate ACPI events of their own on certain ThinkPads, as long as they are masked off in the ibm-acpi hotkey's mask (or the hotkey feature is disabled in ibm-acpi).
If you want the ThinkPad's BIOS and ACPI methods to know about these keys being pressed, you probably want to leave them masked out from ibm-acpi, and use their non-HKEY events listed below, instead.
| key | event |
|---|---|
| FnF4 | button/sleep SLPB 00000080 00000001 |
| FnF12 | ibm/hotkey HKEY 00000080 0000100c |
tpb configuration
| key | config keyword |
|---|---|
| Access IBM or ThinkPad | THINKPAD |
| Home | HOME |
| Search | SEARCH |
| Favorites | FAVORITES |
| Reload | RELOAD |
| Abort | ABORT |
| Backward | BACKWARD |
| Forward | FORWARD |
| Fn | FN |
| FnSpace | CALLBACK (zoom on/off) |
| FnPageUp | CALLBACK (thinklight on/off) |
| FnF7 | CALLBACK (display lcd/crt/both) |
| FnF8 | CALLBACK (expand on/off) |
| FnHome | CALLBACK (brightness <percent>) |
| FnEnd | CALLBACK (brightness <percent>) |
| Volume up | CALLBACK (volume <percent>) |
| Volume down | CALLBACK (volume <percent>) |
| Volume mute | CALLBACK (mute on/off) |
To all parameter keywords should be assigned the full path to the executables supposed to be started on key press. The exectable provided for the CALLBACK keyword should take the parameters given in parentheses and act according to them. If you want to use xmodmap for the HOME, SEARCH, MAIL, FAVORITES, RELOAD, ABORT, BACKWARD, FORWARD and FN keys you should provide a XEVENTS OFF in your /etc/tpbrc.
For Debian users, tpb is started from /etc/X11/Xsession.d/90tpb.
Sound Button configuration
Note: Tested on T60p with Ubuntu 6.06 LTS
Most Thinkpads have a hardware sound mixer, thus the volumes buttons should work without configuration. However, this change is not reflected in the software mixer. tpb has a switch to enable software mixer support via OSS. The manual recommends this only for devices without a hardware mixer, but it also works for other hadware mixer enabled devices, even with the ALSA system. Just put MIXER ON in your /etc/tpbrc file and you can see the effect immediately in any ALSA mixer (e.g. kmix). For this to work you need write permissions to /dev/nvram.
xmodmap configuration
xmodmap enables you to edit the modifier map and keymap tables that are used to translate keycodes into keysyms. Understood? Well, basically it allows you to give the X server a dictionary for the translation of keycodes like "97" into more human readable synonyms like "Home". This way xmodmap allows you to make the special keys of your keyboard known to X applications.
To discover the keycode that a certain keypress produces, use the tool $ xev
Usually you should write your keycode-keysym associations into the file ~/.Xmodmap. This file is usually read by the X session startup scripts of your system, so that the mappings automatically get included everytime you run the X server.
The ~/.Xmodmap lines for our purpose are in the form of
keycode <keycode> = <keysym>
Load the assocation using the command
$ xmodmap ~/.Xmodmap
(some configurations do this automatically upon X startup).
The following table shows the keycodes generated by the ThinkPad special keys and sensible keysyms to assign them to.
| key | keycode | keysym |
|---|---|---|
| Access IBM or ThinkPad | 159 | ? |
| Backward | 234 | XF86Back or F19 |
| Forward | 233 | XF86Forward or F20 |
| Home | 178 | XF86HomePage |
| Search | 229 | XF86Search |
| 236 | XF86Mail | |
| Favorites | 230 | XF86AddFavorite or XF86Favorites |
| Reload | 231 | XF86Reload |
| Abort | 232 | XF86Stop |
| Fn | 227 | F35 |
Note: if you are running tpb you might need to add the line XEVENTS=off into your tpbrc to stop it from grabbing the key events and allow them to get through to X instead.
Note: XF86Forward and XF86Back do not work correctly in Firefox. You may want to map them to F19 and F20 instead if you use Firefox.
Using Caps Lock as Super L (Windows key)
You can easily use Caps Lock as Win key by adding the following in your ~/.Xmodmap:
! No Caps Lock
clear lock
! Caps Lock as Win key
add mod4 = Caps_Lock
NumLock
On the ThinkPad X21, T21, T30, X31, T43, R51 and possibly other models, X does not recognize the keycode for NumLk = Shift+ScrLk. To fix this, add the following to ~/.Xmodmap or /etc/X11/Xmodmap and run xmodmap as described before:
keycode 77 = Num_Lock
Mapping keys with setkeycodes
You can use the setkeycodes command to remap certain keys. I.e. you can use # setkeycodes 6e 109 6d 104 69 28 6b 1 to map the Tablets Up and Down keys to the standard PageUp and PageDown keys and Tablet Escape and Enter to their respective keys.
The following table shows the keycodes generated by the ThinkPad keys.
| key | keycode |
|---|---|
| Tablet orientation | 0x6d |
| Tablet Shortcut | 0x6e |
| Tablet Esc | 0x6b |
| Tablet Enter | 0x69 |
| Tablet Up | 0x68 |
| Tablet Down | 0x6c |
| Tablet (unlabeled) | 0x67 |
Example Applications
Web Browsers
Firefox
To have firefox make use of the browser keys you need to modify one of its files3. To do this you will first need to extract it from the browser.jar archive. Do...
# cd <firefox-directory>/chrome# unzip browser.jar
The file of interest is content/browser/browser.xul. Edit it...
# vi content/browser/browser.xul
Look for the <keyset id="mainKeyset"> section and add the following lines within...
<key id="goBackKb" keycode="VK_F19" command="Browser:Back" /> <key id="goForwardKb" keycode="VK_F20" command="Browser:Forward" />
Now save the file and repackage the browser.jar archive...
# zip -rD0 browser.jar content/browser/
That's it.
Konqueror
KDE allows you set key mappings for KDE applications (Go to KMenu > System > Control Center > Regional & Accessibility > Keyboard Shortcuts). By default (at least in KDE 3.5), XF86Back and XF86Forward are set as alternatives to Alt-Left and Alt-Right, and are mapped to KDE Back and Forward navigation actions.
If you use Konqueror as your only browser, you only need to set up ~/.Xmodmap as described above to assign ThinkPad back/forward keys to the symbols XF86Back/XF86Forward. This also make these keys work for other KDE applications such as Quanta Plus, KPackage and so on (not all KDE applications honor this setting, e.g. KDE help system doesn't).
If you want to use Firefox, however, the above settings do not work. You will have to map ThinkPad back/forward keys to F19/F20 as described above, and change KDE navigation key settings to use F19/F20 instead of the default.
Opera
However this isn't a simple configration file, you can set your browser manually.
Go to Tool > Settings > Mouse and keyboard > Keyboard settings > Edit > Browser Window. There add F19 - Back and F20 - Forward. Now you can surf using your TP keys ;-)
Window Managers
fvwm
To get the Forward and Backward keys to cycle through pages in the virtual desktop, add this to your ~/.fvwmrc:
Key XF86Back A A Scroll -100000 0 Key XF86Forward A A Scroll +100000 0
If you use multiple virtual desktops, you could instead use the keys to flip between them by using GotoDesk.
fluxbox
To get the keys to cycle through pages in the virtual desktop, add this to your ~/.fluxbox/keys:
None F19 :PrevWorkspace None F20 :NextWorkspace
pekwm configuration
You can make the two browser keys switch workspaces in pekwm, by adding the following two lines to the ~/.pekwm/keys file:
KeyPress = "Mod1 XF86Back" { Actions = "GoToWorkspace prev" }
KeyPress = "Mod1 XF86Forward" { Actions = "GoToWorkspace next" }
pwm
Another example how to use these two keys to switch between pwm tabs. These two lines should be added to ~/.pwm/keys-default.conf or /etc/pwm/keys-default.conf:
kbind "Back", "switch_rot", -1 kbind "Forward", "switch_rot", 1
icewm
Some applications use CtrlLeft and CtrlRight to set the cursor to the beginning of the previous / next word. In icewm, though, they're bound to previous / next workspace. Change these two options in ~/.icewm/preferences to bind those to Forward and Backward: (Provided you assigned keysyms F19 and F20 with xmodmap)
# "Previous workspace" shortcut KeySysWorkspacePrev="F19" # "Next workspace" shortcut KeySysWorkspaceNext="F20"
Other Uses
Console tools configuraton
To make the Forward and Backward keys useful in console, add this to your keymap (/etc/console/boottime.kmap.gz in Debian):
keycode 158 = Decr_Console keycode 159 = Incr_Console
Alternatively you can load this script (perhaps on system startup) to enable Backward/Forward button console (VT) switch:
#!/bin/sh setkeycodes e06a 126 e069 127 echo keycode 126 = Decr_Console | loadkeys echo keycode 127 = Incr_Console | loadkeys
It should work with any distro.
External Sources
- IBMs page on configuring the ThinkPad buttons (ThinkPad, Access IBM, Mail, Search, and Home buttons) under Linux
- Rob Mayoffs page on using IBM Keyboard Navigation Keys in Linux Mozilla and Firefox
- Ryan Barretts blog article about using the browser keys in Firefox
| FOOTNOTES [Δ] |
- if there are more than one tool listed, one is sufficient
- 'full' means you can completely reassign any action to be triggered by the key, 'additional actions' means you can trigger actions in addition to the standard function of the key, which can not be changed.
- Thanks go to Ryan Barrett for writing the little howto on his blog.
