[Bug 1006676] Re: showkey fails with "Couldn't get a file descriptor referring to the console"

[Eric S. Raymond]

I am the author of showkey.

I only just became aware of this bug myself, by trying to run showkey in
the terminal emulator under i3.  The curious thing about it is that
"Couldn't get a file descriptor referring to the console" does not occur
as a string in the program source.

I think something else is emitting it, possibly the shell.  When I
googled to try to figure out what, I found this big thread.

The code ran fine under xfce, so there is likely some window-manager
specific thing going on.

I confirm that going root works around the problem.

I think it would be annoying to force users to go root in environments
where it's not necessary, so I'm going to document this as a known
problem on the man page and give the workaround.

The 1,8 release has been shipped.

My apologies for not catching this sooner.  It's not a program I use
often.

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1006676

Title:
  showkey fails with "Couldn't get a file descriptor referring to the
  console"

Status in kbd package in Ubuntu:
  Invalid

Bug description:
  When invoked in Gnome Terminal 3.0.1 (Ubuntu 11.10), showkey
  uninformatively exits after reporting:

    "Couldn't get a file descriptor referring to the console"

  For one who doesn't know what this means (such as myself), showkey is
  thus rendered unusable. The man page has no information about this
  behaviour.

  Installed kbd package: 1.15.2-3ubuntu1

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