ukbd — USB keyboard driver
Contents
Configuration
By default, the keyboard subsystem does not create the appropriate devices yet. Make sure you
reconfigure your kernel with the following option in the kernel config file:
optionsKBD_INSTALL_CDEV
If both an AT keyboard USB keyboards are used at the same time, the AT keyboard will appear as kbd0 in
/dev. The USB keyboards will be kbd1, kbd2, etc. You can see some information about the keyboard with
the following command:
kbdcontrol-i</dev/kbd1
or load a keymap with
kbdcontrol-lkeymaps/pt.iso</dev/kbd1
See kbdcontrol(1) for more possible options.
You can swap console keyboards by using the command
kbdcontrol-k/dev/kbd1
From this point on, the first USB keyboard will be the keyboard to be used by the console.
If you want to use a USB keyboard as your default and not use an AT keyboard at all, you will have to
remove the deviceatkbd line from the kernel configuration file. Because of the device initialization
order, the USB keyboard will be detected after the console driver initializes itself and you have to
explicitly tell the console driver to use the existence of the USB keyboard. This can be done in one of
the following two ways.
Run the following command as a part of system initialization:
kbdcontrol-k/dev/kbd0</dev/ttyv0>/dev/null
(Note that as the USB keyboard is the only keyboard, it is accessed as /dev/kbd0) or otherwise tell the
console driver to periodically look for a keyboard by setting a flag in the kernel configuration file:
devicesc0atisa?flags0x100
With the above flag, the console driver will try to detect any keyboard in the system if it did not
detect one while it was initialized at boot time.
Description
The ukbd driver provides support for keyboards that attach to the USB port. usb(4) and one of uhci(4) or
ohci(4) must be configured in the kernel as well.
Driver Configuration
optionsKBD_INSTALL_CDEV
Make the keyboards available through a character device in /dev.
optionsUKBD_DFLT_KEYMAPmakeoptionsUKBD_DFLT_KEYMAP=fr.iso
The above lines will put the French ISO keymap in the ukbd driver. You can specify any keymap in
/usr/share/syscons/keymaps or /usr/share/vt/keymaps (depending on the console driver being used) with
this option.
optionsKBD_DISABLE_KEYMAP_LOADING
Do not allow the user to change the keymap. Note that these options also affect the AT keyboard driver,
atkbd(4).
Examples
deviceukbd
Add the ukbd driver to the kernel.
Files
/dev/kbd* blocking device nodes
Name
ukbd — USB keyboard driver
See Also
kbdcontrol(1), ohci(4), syscons(4), uhci(4), usb(4), vt(4), config(8)
Synopsis
To compile this driver into the kernel, place the following line in your kernel configuration file:
deviceukbd
Alternatively, to load the driver as a module at boot time, place the following line in loader.conf(5):
ukbd_load="YES"
Sysctl Variables
The following variables are available as both sysctl(8) variables and loader(8) tunables:
hw.usb.ukbd.debug
Debug output level, where 0 is debugging disabled and larger values increase debug message
verbosity. Default is 0.
