Thanks for the reply, I did some testing and found some interesting things: 1. Everytime I push the key on the keyboard, I can see something out from /dev/input/event0 by "cat /dev/input/event0". However, I don't see a directory named "proc/input", did I miss configure something in the kernel? 2. read() does work and is a blocking read. However, if I use select, then it does not work. Select() never detects the state change. Here is the sample code I am using: { int test_fd = -1; fd_set rfds; struct timeval tv; tv.tv_sec = 1; tv.tv_usec = 0; test_fd = open("/dev/input/event0", O_RDONLY); if( test_fd < 0 ) exit(0); while( 1 ) { FD_ZERO(&rfds); FD_SET(test_fd, &rfds); retval = select( 1, &rfds, NULL, NULL, &tv ); if( retval ) printf("\nDetects something...."); } } What could be wrong? Thanks John -----Original Message----- From: Jan-Benedict Glaw [mailto:jbglaw@xxxxxxxxxx] Sent: Thursday, April 15, 2004 2:36 AM To: Linux/MIPS Development Subject: Re: questions about keyboard On Wed, 2004-04-14 14:56:20 -0600, Xu, Jiang <Jiang.Xu@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message <F71A246055866844B66AFEB10654E7860F1B0D@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>: > 2. In the application, how can I know which input/event# the usb > keyboard connects to? You don't. You can - Hope that your keyboard is the one and only device... - Read /proc/bus/input/devices - there should be a "kbd" handler in the "H: " section - select() on all event* devices and just only process keypresses generated from "normal" keys. > 3. Is there some reference documents about how to read things from > input/event# ? I mean such as how to read key event? I don't think there's really good docu available, but it's really simple. Just open all devices, select() until there's data available (or just call a blocking read() on it). Something like this should work, but you'd better add error checking to the open() call... #include <linux/input.h> ssize_t ret; struct input_event my_input; int fd; fd = open ("/dev/input/event0", O_RDONLY); for (;;) { ret = read (fd, &my_input, sizeof (my_input)); if (ret != sizeof (my_input) break; if (my_input.type != EV_KEY) continue; /* my_input.code and my_input.type now contain the key and press/release state; refer to the #defines in linux/input.h for the mapping .code -> ASCII value */ } close (fd); -- Jan-Benedict Glaw jbglaw@xxxxxxxxxx . +49-172-7608481 "Eine Freie Meinung in einem Freien Kopf | Gegen Zensur | Gegen Krieg fuer einen Freien Staat voll Freier Bürger" | im Internet! | im Irak! ret = do_actions((curr | FREE_SPEECH) & ~(NEW_COPYRIGHT_LAW | DRM | TCPA));