CrunchBang Linux

TromboneDog

New Member

Registered: 2013-07-14

Posts: 4

Window managers kill volume keys

Hello. I'm new to this list. I have used Red Hat (many years ago) for
some years, then Suse (before there was a split), then Debian, then
all the *buntus, and toyed with some others (Aptosid, Knoppix, Simply
Mepis,...). I recently discovered Crunchbang and love it, and have put
it on all my computers. [The first real shock with it was how fast it
installed: I didn't have to sit around for 20 minutes while it loaded
"language packs", which I suspected I didn't need.] I like Openbox
just fine, but I've recently felt the need for a tiling window
manager. I've read the magnificent review of them at your wiki,

  http://crunchbang.org/forums/viewtopic.php?id=d.

To experiment, I installed i3, awesome, and xmonad on: a Lenovo
desktop, a Toshiba laptop, a Fujitsu tablet. In each case the volume
controls stopped working (they're controlled by Fn + (function or
arrow keys). Moreover, on the laptop and tablet the "tap" function on
the touchpad got disabled. This does not make sense to me, and I have
no idea how to fix it. Any help will be appreciated.

tty-tourist

#! CrunchBangian

From: within the swirl

Registered: 2013-05-26

Posts: 279

Re: Window managers kill volume keys

What makes the FN volume keys work as default in #! is xfce4-volumed. It just captures the volume keys and displays a volume indicator via xfce4-notifyd. I don't like that so I purged the packages and configured the keys in rc.xml something like this:

<keybind key="XF86AudioRaiseVolume">
      <action name="Execute">
        <command>amixer sset Master,0 5+</command>
      </action>
    </keybind>
    <keybind key="XF86AudioLowerVolume">
      <action name="Execute">
        <command>amixer sset Master,0 5-</command>
      </action>
    </keybind>
    <keybind key="XF86AudioMute">
      <action name="Execute">
        <command>amixer sset Master,0 toggle</command>
      </action>
    </keybind>

You could bind the keys to do a similar thing in the wm you're using or try to get xfce4-volumed to work in that wm ...

Last edited by tty-tourist (2013-07-15 11:19:44)

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"You're just a tourist with a typewriter." - Charlie Meadows, Barton Fink

kbmonkey

#! Die Hard

Registered: 2011-01-14

Posts: 838

Website

Re: Window managers kill volume keys

Hi TromboneDog.

These window managers can be configured to react to your key presses. There are various ways to do this, these WM's allow you to configure global hotkeys, but specifically I like to use xbindkeys as you then keep the same configuration across all WM's.

Install xbindkeys and use `xev` to get the keycodes for your buttons and setup ~/.xbindkeysrc

"amixer -c 0 set Master 3+"
	Mod2 + XF86AudioRaiseVolume

Then run xbindkeys on login.

These stop working since xfce4-volumed does not start with tiling WM's. I guess you could try start that too but I can't vouch for the result 

---

My PC's

TromboneDog

New Member

Registered: 2013-07-14

Posts: 4

Re: Window managers kill volume keys

Thank you all for your replies. Let me recall what the problem was: in
several tiling window managers on several computers I could not (1)
change or mute the volume, (2) I could not enable touchpad
tapping. And though I've used various Linuxes for years, I know
nothing about hardware and only very elementary bash. (E.g. I don't
know whether I'm using alsa or pulseaudio--I seem to have parts of
each.) In trying to solve these problems I focused on i3.

For the volume change problem, I tried your various solutions, as well
as several others found elsewhere. Most involved re-binding keys. In
trying to follow these I was hindered by two factors: (1) my ignorance
of harware; in particular, I don't know whether I'm using alsa or
pulseaudio--I seem to be using "parts" of each, and (2) I studied
keybinding but was unable to figure out what was going on with the Fn
key. Eventually I came across the following, which, if true, seems to
me scandalous: from

http://askubuntu.com/questions/80777/ho … or-fn-keys

"In general there is no way to know that Fn was pressed and and the
scancode and the keycode of key-combinations including Fn depend on
the individual keyboard design."

Alas, no one responded to the second part of my problem: how to enable
tapping on a touchpad.

Finally I came up with what seemed to be simple solutions: (1)
xfce4-volumed, (2) synclient TapButton1=1. At least these work if
started from the command line in a terminal. Eventually it occurred to
me that it might be simpler to look in #!'s openbox autostart
script. I naively copied the settings there (e.g. "xfce4-volume &")
into my .i3/config script. When I started up i3, it complained that I
had corrupted its config file: it _seems_ that all commands there must
start with certain keywords, none of which seemed applicable to what I
wanted to do. Among them is "bindsym", which perhaps explains why so
many solutions suggested binding keys.

Rather than bind keys to commands that will be used only once per
session, I wrote a bash script, "i3-startup", into which I just copied
the relevant settings from the openbox config file. This seems to work ok.