Setting up my Microsoft Natural Keyboard under Debian Squeeze

I upgraded to Debian Squeeze over the week-end and it broke my custom Xmodmap. While I was fixing it, I realized that the special keys of my Microsoft Natural keyboard that were not working under Lenny were now functionnal. The only piece missing was the "zoom" key. Here is how I got it to work.

I found on the askubuntu forum an solution to the same problem, that is missing the following details.

To find which keysym to map, I listed input devices:

$ ls /dev/input/by-id/
usb-Logitech_USB-PS.2_Optical_Mouse-mouse        usb-Logitech_USB-PS_2_Optical_Mouse-mouse
usb-Logitech_USB-PS_2_Optical_Mouse-event-mouse  usb-Microsoft_Natural??_Ergonomic_Keyboard_4000-event-kbd

then used evtest to find the keysym:

$ evtest /dev/input/by-id/usb-Microsoft*

then used udevadm to find the identifiers:

$ udevadm info --export-db | less

then edited /lib/udev/rules.d/95-keymap.rules to add:

ENV{ID_VENDOR}=="Microsoft", ENV{ID_MODEL_ID}=="00db", RUN+="keymap $name microsoft-natural-keyboard-4000"

in the section keyboard_usbcheck

and created the keymap file:

$ cat /lib/udev/keymaps/microsoft-natural-keyboard-4000
0xc022d pageup
0xc022e pagedown

then loaded the keymap:

$ /lib/udev/keymap /dev/input/by-id/usb-Microsoft_Natural®_Ergonomic_Keyboard_4000-event-kbd /lib/udev/keymaps/microsoft-natural-keyboard-4000

then used evtest again to check it was working.

Of course, you do not have to map the events to pageup and pagedown, but I found it convenient to use that key to scroll up and down pages.

Hope this helps :)