Vaio keys not working on Sony VAIO VGN-SR29XN

[Gavin Panella]

The top row of keys on this laptop are "MODE", then 5 blank keys (used
for app launching in Windows), then a "SETTING" key.

xev does not show any events, nor are any events discovered by
input-events. /dev/input/event4 seems to be the right place - it's
named "Sony Vaio Keys". I've attached a log of the what input-events
shows for 0-9.

Andy Whitcroft helped me figure this out; many thanks :)

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: amd64
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.04
HibernationDevice: RESUME=UUID=97537135-6d3c-48aa-a5a1-078f47612fa3
MachineType: Sony Corporation VGN-SR29XN_S
Package: linux-image-2.6.28-11-generic 2.6.28-11.42
ProcCmdLine: root=UUID=5c82e672-37d9-4518-86ef-f2112ef6d843 ro quiet splash
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
 SHELL=bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.28-11.42-generic
SourcePackage: linux

[Keng-Yu Lin (lexical)]

Hi, can you try to use the command "acpi_listen" and report us its output? Its usage is much the same as "xev."

[Hans Bakker (hansmbakker)]

I have the following laptop:
Sony Corporation
VGN-SR51MF_S
C6025431

acpi_listen returns the following:
- Vaio Mode button (used to switch hotkey sets):
    - On keydown: sony/hotkey SNC 00000001 00000041
    - On keyup: ^@sony/hotkey SNC 00000001 00000038
- Vaio Button 1 (leftmost Vaio button):
    - On keydown: sony/hotkey SNC 00000001 00000020
    - On keyup: sony/hotkey SNC 00000001 00000038
- Vaio Button 2:
    - On keydown: sony/hotkey SNC 00000001 00000021
    - On keyup: sony/hotkey SNC 00000001 00000038
- Vaio Button 3:
    - On keydown: sony/hotkey SNC 00000001 00000022
    - On keyup: sony/hotkey SNC 00000001 00000038
- Vaio Button 4:
    - On keydown: sony/hotkey SNC 00000001 00000042
    - On keyup: sony/hotkey SNC 00000001 00000038
- Vaio Button 5 (rightmost Vaio button):
    - On keydown: sony/hotkey SNC 00000001 00000043
    - On keyup: ^@sony/hotkey SNC 00000001 00000038
- Vaio Settings Button (used to change what actions these buttons are assigned to):
    - On keydown: sony/hotkey SNC 00000001 00000044
    - On keyup: ^@sony/hotkey SNC 00000001 00000038

It looks strange but on keyup of Button 5 and the Settings button there always first comes a ^ and a @-sign).

I can't assign the Mode-button, Button 5 and the Settings-button to any action in KDE, maybe because they behave different?

Please let me know if you need more information

[Hans Bakker (hansmbakker)]

The command
xev | grep -A2 --line-buffered '^KeyRelease' | sed -n '/keycode /s/^.*keycode \([0-9]*\).* (.*, \(.*\)).*$/\1 \2/p'
returns for the following sequence: Mode, Button 1, Button 2, Button 3, Button 4, Button 5, Settings

191 NoSymbol
156 XF86Launch1
157 XF86Launch2
210 XF86Launch3
211 XF86Launch4
192 NoSymbol
193 NoSymbol

[Sergei Ianovich (ynvich-gmail)]

Many keys (WiFi, Volume up/down, eject, media) don't work on Vaio TX770P. I've recently moved to 9.10 from Debian/unstable, where I had a custom kernel patch queue which made all them work. I filed the patches to kernel-acpi mailing list in April 2008, but they are still not accepted.

If someone is willing to review, I could take this bug and fix it for Ubuntu.

[Hans Bakker (hansmbakker)]

This problem still exists on Kubuntu 10.04

[Hans Bakker (hansmbakker)]

At least the 192 keycode (fifth quick launch key) should be mapped to XF86Launch5.

The 191 keycode (Mode button) could be mapped to XF86Option, while 193 could be mapped to XF86Tools.

[Hans Bakker (hansmbakker)]

I'm using Kubuntu 10.04 on a VAIO VGN-SR51MF/S laptop.
The xkb-data package has version 1.7-1ubuntu1.

The laptop has a few hotkeys. The first four of these hotkeys are mapped correctly to XF86Launch1 up to XF86Launch4, respectively.

The fifth hotkey, the mode button and the setting button have no keysym (xev reports the keycodes, but reports 'NoSymbol' as keysym).

The keycodes are the following:
191 for the mode button
192 for the fifth hotkey (should be mapped to XF86Launch5)
193 for the setting button

For the mode and setting button, I don't know a good suggestion right now, maybe XF86Launch0 for the mode button and XF86Launch6 for the setting button? Or XF86Tools for the mode button and XF86Option for the setting button?

[Hans Bakker (hansmbakker)]

The missing keysym problem is reported upstream as https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=25835.

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

I'm not sure why a task has been opened for this bug on acpi-support. Acpi-support is not responsible for translating keypresses into input events, the kernel is. Marking invalid.

[Sergey V. Udaltsov (svu)]

Could you please tell me what kbd driver you are using in X.Org? Pleas run

xprop -root | grep XKB

[Sergey V. Udaltsov (svu)]

Also, I would like to see the output

xkbcomp :0 -xkb out.xkb

[Hans Bakker (hansmbakker)]

Created an attachment (id=32713)
result of xkbcomp :0 -xkb out.xkb

[Hans Bakker (hansmbakker)]

xprop -root | grep XKB
_XKB_RULES_NAMES(STRING) = "evdev", "pc105", "us", "altgr-intl",
"lv3:ralt_switch"

xkbcomp :0 -xkb out.xkb
Warning: Could not load keyboard geometry for :0
                  BadAlloc (insufficient resources for operation)
                  Resulting keymap file will not describe geometry

[Keng-Yu Lin (lexical)]

There are key codes. I'll recommend to remap the key codes to the keysyms you want with `xmodmap`.

[Hans Bakker (hansmbakker)]

I think that using xmodmap locally instead of upstream means that it will not work for the average user. That's why I filed a bug at freedesktop.org.

[Sergey V. Udaltsov (svu)]

> Warning: Could not load keyboard geometry for :0
> BadAlloc (insufficient resources for operation)
> Resulting keymap file will not describe geometry
This is somewhat suspicious. Are you sure your Xorg build is correct?

Also,

>191 for the mode button
>192 for the fifth hotkey (should be mapped to XF86Launch5)
>193 for the setting button

There are no "mode" or "setting" buttons as such. Could you please look at the /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/inet file and check what symbols are available.

[Hans Bakker (hansmbakker)]

(In reply to comment #5)
> > Warning: Could not load keyboard geometry for :0
> > BadAlloc (insufficient resources for operation)
> > Resulting keymap file will not describe geometry
> This is somewhat suspicious. Are you sure your Xorg build is correct?

I tried it again today and now only
_XKB_RULES_NAMES(STRING) = "evdev", "pc105", "us", "intl", "lv3:ralt_switch"
is printed. Probably something was fixed in Kubuntu's Xorg packages :)

> Also,
>
> >191 for the mode button
> >192 for the fifth hotkey (should be mapped to XF86Launch5)
> >193 for the setting button
>
> There are no "mode" or "setting" buttons as such. Could you please look at the
> /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/inet file and check what symbols are available.
>
What about mapping 191 ("mode") to XF86Tools and 193 ("settings") to XF86MenuKB?

[Sergey V. Udaltsov (svu)]

Done. Please check git.

[Hans Bakker (hansmbakker)]

Thank you! Could you give an expectation of when this will be released?

2010/3/29 <email address hidden>

> http://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=25835
>
>
> Sergey V. Udaltsov <email address hidden> changed:
>
> What |Removed |Added
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Status|NEW |RESOLVED
> Resolution| |FIXED
>
>
>
>
> --- Comment #7 from Sergey V. Udaltsov <email address hidden> 2010-03-28
> 16:13:02 PST ---
> Done. Please check git.
>
>
> --
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[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

This is fixed in Lucid. The patch to solve it was cherrypicked as part of the 1.8-1ubuntu3 update a few weeks ago. Should be good to go now.

[Hans Bakker (hansmbakker)]

It was indeed fixed in X.org git, but apparently the problem still remains as xev still returns NoSymbol instead of a X Keysym when pressing the mode button, the settings button or the fifth app launch key.

[Sergey V. Udaltsov (svu)]

The fix was slightly amended, see

https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=5783