program doesn't find libsuinput files (xfce)

[Sarah Van Bogaert]

Hi,

I first installed the python-uinput program on Gnome (in Debian) and it works properly for my application. However, when I installed it the same way on Xfce (also Debian), it crashes at initialization. Indeed, when reading the last line of the code:

import uinput
events = (uinput.KEY_LEFTCTRL,)
device = uinput.Device(events)

it crashes and shows this error message:

File "/usr/local/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/uinput/__init__.py", line 108, in __init__
    self.__uinput_fd = _libsuinput.suinput_open()
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/uinput/__init__.py", line 65, in _error_handler
    raise OSError(code, os.strerror(code))
OSError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory

The file _libsuinput.so is where it should be, i.e. in /usr/local/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/

Thanks

[Sarah Van Bogaert (svbg)]

I am using version version 0.9 of python-uinput and version 2.6.6 of python.

[Sarah Van Bogaert (svbg)]

The same message appears when I run the example programs mouse.py, joystick.py and keyboard.py

[a (tuomasjjrasanen)]

Hi and thanks for reporting this issue.

It seems that root cause for this error message is that the uinput device file (the file which is used to initialize and create uinput devices) cannot be found.

Could you please run following command and then report the output:

udevadm info --query=all --path=/devices/virtual/misc/uinput

[Sarah Van Bogaert (svbg)]

This is the answer I get:
device path not found

It may help you to know that I hadn't installed libudev-dev the first time I installed the source code. After I finally installed libudev-dev, I installed python-uinput a second time to be sure.

[a (tuomasjjrasanen)]

Hmm.. then it might be that you don't have the necessary uinput kernel module in your system.

Could you please run following commands, in this order:

1. grep uinput /proc/modules

What does it print?

2. su -c 'modprobe -i uinput' && grep uinput /proc/modules

What does it print?

Thanks in advance!

[Sarah Van Bogaert (svbg)]

The first command gives nothing back:
$ grep uinput /proc/modules

When I run the second, I get:
$ su -c 'modprobe -i uinput' && grep uinput /proc/modules
uinput 4796 0 - Live 0xf7c7d000

[a (tuomasjjrasanen)]

Perfect!

So the root cause is that the uinput module was not loaded. `modprobe uinput' loads the kernel module.

After running 'modprobe uinput', also python-uinput should be working. To load uinput module automatically after boot, add uinput to /etc/modules::

su -c 'echo uinput >> /etc/modules'

I'll fix the .deb package to include this fix in future releases.

[Sarah Van Bogaert (svbg)]

That was it, it works now :-)

Thanks a lot!

[a (tuomasjjrasanen)]

I'm not providing pre-built binaries anymore, but the modprobing uinput is now mentioned in documentation.