|
HTML rendering created 2025-09-06 by Michael Kerrisk, author of The Linux Programming Interface. For details of in-depth Linux/UNIX system programming training courses that I teach, look here. Hosting by jambit GmbH. |
|
|
NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | FILES | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON |
|
|
|
DUMPKEYS(1) General Commands Manual DUMPKEYS(1)
dumpkeys - dump keyboard translation tables
dumpkeys [OPTIONS]
dumpkeys writes, to the standard output, the current contents of
the keyboard driver's translation tables, in the format specified
by keymaps(5).
Using the various options, the format of the output can be
controlled and also other information from the kernel and the
programs dumpkeys(1) and loadkeys(1) can be obtained.
-h --help
Prints the program's version number and a short usage
message to the program's standard error output and exits.
-i --short-info
Prints some characteristics of the kernel's keyboard
driver. The items shown are:
Keycode range supported by the kernel
This tells what values can be used after the keycode
keyword in keytable files. See keymaps(5) for more
information and the syntax of these files.
Number of actions bindable to a key
This tells how many different actions a single key
can output using various modifier keys. If the value
is 16 for example, you can define up to 16 different
actions to a key combined with modifiers. When the
value is 16, the kernel probably knows about four
modifier keys, which you can press in different
combinations with the key to access all the bound
actions.
Ranges of action codes supported by the kernel
This item contains a list of action code ranges in
hexadecimal notation. These are the values that can
be used in the right hand side of a key definition,
ie. the vv's in a line
keycode xx = vv vv vv vv
(see keymaps(5) for more information about the
format of key definition lines). dumpkeys(1) and
loadkeys(1) support a symbolic notation, which is
preferable to the numeric one, as the action codes
may vary from kernel to kernel while the symbolic
names usually remain the same. However, the list of
action code ranges can be used to determine, if the
kernel actually supports all the symbols loadkeys(1)
knows, or are there maybe some actions supported by
the kernel that have no symbolic name in your
loadkeys(1) program. To see this, you compare the
range list with the action symbol list, see option
--long-info below.
Number of function keys supported by kernel
This tells the number of action codes that can be
used to output strings of characters. These action
codes are traditionally bound to the various
function and editing keys of the keyboard and are
defined to send standard escape sequences. However,
you can redefine these to send common command lines,
email addresses or whatever you like. Especially if
the number of this item is greater than the number
of function and editing keys in your keyboard, you
may have some "spare" action codes that you can bind
to AltGr-letter combinations, for example, to send
some useful strings. See loadkeys(1) for more
details.
Function strings
You can see you current function key definitions
with the command
dumpkeys --funcs-only
-l -s --long-info
This option instructs dumpkeys to print a long information
listing. The output is the same as with the --short-info
appended with the list of action symbols supported by
loadkeys(1) and dumpkeys(1), along with the symbols'
numeric values.
-n --numeric
This option causes dumpkeys to by-pass the conversion of
action code values to symbolic notation and to print the in
hexadecimal format instead.
-f --full-table
This makes dumpkeys skip all the short-hand heuristics (see
keymaps(5)) and output the key bindings in the canonical
form. First a keymaps line describing the currently defined
modifier combinations is printed. Then for each key a row
with a column for each modifier combination is printed. For
example, if the current keymap in use uses seven modifiers,
every row will have seven action code columns. This format
can be useful for example to programs that post-process the
output of dumpkeys.
-Sshape --shape=shape
Available shapes:
2 default output.
4 one line for each keycode.
8 one line for each (modifier,keycode) pair.
16 one line for each keycode until 1st hole.
-1 --separate-lines
This forces dumpkeys to write one line per
(modifier,keycode) pair. It prefixes the word plain for
plain keycodes.
-t --funcs-only
When this option is given, dumpkeys prints only the
function key string definitions. Normally dumpkeys prints
both the key bindings and the string definitions.
-k --keys-only
When this option is given, dumpkeys prints only the key
bindings. Normally dumpkeys prints both the key bindings
and the string definitions.
-d --compose-only
When this option is given, dumpkeys prints only the compose
key combinations. This option is available only if your
kernel has compose key support.
-ccharset --charset=charset
This instructs dumpkeys to interpret character code values
according to the specified character set. This affects only
the translation of character code values to symbolic names.
Valid values for charset currently are iso-8859-X, Where X
is a digit in 1-9. If no charset is specified, iso-8859-1
is used as a default. This option produces an output line
`charset "iso-8859-X"', telling loadkeys how to interpret
the keymap. (For example, "division" is 0xf7 in iso-8859-1
but 0xba in iso-8859-8.)
-Cdev --console=dev
The affected console device can be specified using the -C
(or --console ) option. This option supports exactly one
device name.
-v --verbose
Turn on verbose output.
-V --version
Prints version number and exits.
/usr/local/share/keymaps
The recommended directory for keytable files.
loadkeys(1), keymaps(5)
This page is part of the kbd (Linux keyboard tools) project.
Information about the project can be found at
⟨http://www.kbd-project.org/⟩. If you have a bug report for this
manual page, send it to kbd@lists.altlinux.org. This page was
obtained from the project's upstream Git repository
⟨https://github.com/legionus/kbd.git⟩ on 2025-08-11. (At that
time, the date of the most recent commit that was found in the
repository was 2025-07-01.) If you discover any rendering
problems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe there is
a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or you have
corrections or improvements to the information in this COLOPHON
(which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
man-pages@man7.org
kbd 1 Sep 1993 DUMPKEYS(1)
Pages that refer to this page: dumpkeys(1), loadkeys(1), showkey(1), unicode_start(1), ioctl_console(2), keymaps(5), setkeycodes(8)
|
HTML rendering created 2025-09-06 by Michael Kerrisk, author of The Linux Programming Interface. For details of in-depth Linux/UNIX system programming training courses that I teach, look here. Hosting by jambit GmbH. |
|