reversing media keys (e.g. volume, lcd brightness, etc)

[TrentonAdams]

Hi Guys,

I have a Macbook, and I'd like the volume keys (F3-F5), and all the other FX keys to behave like FX keys, unless I press "fn" first.

Is there an easy way of reversing the behaviour of my media keys so that I get the behaviour described?

Thanks in advance.

[Malvineous]

It depends how the keyboard is set up. Usually Fn+key generates a unique scancode, so the OS never sees the Fn keypress. If that's the case, then you can't control how the Fn key behaves. You can however manually switch scancodes, so a volume key produces an F3 keycode, and the F3 key produces a volume keycode, which might do what you're after.

Look into xev (for printing keycodes) and xmodmap. For example, I have this in ~/.Xmodmap to set my extra function keys (G1-G6) to F21-F26:

[TrentonAdams]

Hi Malvineous,

I've already done some remappings. But, what I'm finding is that when I do that, the mappings work, but the system still acts as if those keys were pressed. e.g. I'm getting my brightness turned down, and it's acting as F1 as well. Perhaps I didn't do enough remapping. Here is what I was doing...

For example...
keycode 101 is (fn+F1)
keycode 67 is (F1 by itself)

The xmod remapping below works, except it still does it's special function, such as adjusting my brightness. It was not this way with some previous kernels. For example, 2.6.17 did not have support for those keys at all, at least not by default. So, I'm wondering if there's anything that can be done on startup, to avoid X key bindings completely. Then X can pick it up from the console as it normally does.

[Malvineous]

Do the keys still function without X11 loaded? Perhaps the kernel is handling the keys before passing them to X11? You might need to use one of the console commands (loadkeys? setkeys?) to stop the kernel from using the key.

[TrentonAdams]