Assigning multimedia keys for sound

Hello Everyone,
I have just installed the Elive system and was looking for ways to set the sound buttons ((volume up and down). I Could find some settings for the keyboard, but don't see or understand how to assign them.. Is there a way to configure some keys for volume control?
Hope someone knows a solution.

Well, there’s multiple ways to make them working but sounds like they are not recognized correctly by the system, first because they should simply work by default without need to configure anything

So let’s see the different options:

Configuring the key binding

Open the keyboard bindings configurator in the Enlightenment desktop and you can configure on it any combination of keys assigned to for example the “exec” function, Elive has a special command called “setvolume” to change your audio volumes, see the other (already configured) options to see an example of how to use them to change volumes

When you add (or modify) and existing key binding you need to press the key or combination of keys (with Alt, control, etc…) that you want to trigger. If you are pressing the key and it is not recognized then there’s an issue, explained next:

Unrecognized keys

It is possible that due to using old drivers (kernel) or because a missing package, your keyboard key is not recognized by the system, you can also check this with:

  • run the ‘xev’ command from a terminal and move your mouse to that white window, there, press the keyboard key and see if it prints some information (the information about the key ID’s) in the terminal

If you key is simply not recognized, you should try upgrading your kernel (which is not easy and not suggested in Elive 3.0) or see if you have a missing package to install, you can search it from commands like:

  • apse acpi keys
  • apse acpi keyboard
  • apse multimedia keys

Configuring dbus / acpi / udev settings

It is possible that you simply need to add a special udev / acpi / dbus configuration in your system, for that, just google your laptop model + linux on google + multimedia keys and see if there’s any howto that shows the setting that you need to add to your system

Use any key

Finally, it is also simply easy and fast to just use another combination of keys to reach the same goal, for example in Elive you have by default these combinations:

  • Win key + V: opens the mixer application
  • Win key + Numpad + / - (windows key + the extra numpad keyboard + and - keys): increases and decreases volume, this hotkey is very handy and compatible with any tower computer (not much laptops has numpad keyboard)

And so like these, you can add your own combination, for example win + shift + +/- (not sure if is assigned ot something but its an idea :), if not, maybe could be nice to include it by default in Elive too)

Thank you very much for your explanation! I now understand how to assign keys. When you click on ‘Keyboard bindings’ you can see a list of keys like ‘execute’ or ‘XF86 Caclulator’. You can also see XF86audioLowerVolume and XF86audioRaiseVolume. So when I click on change (I think is change cause I use German which is Ändern) you can assign a key or key combination. I choose Window with + for volume up and Window - for volume down. The new key setting will be moved to the settings with all WIN key combination. First I thought: ‘When are the XF86audioLowerVolume and XF86audioRaiseVolume keys?’ Until I found out they moved to the WIN section.
Needless to see it also works! I can now lower and raise the sound.
Hope this also helps other with the same problems.

By default the volume ones are configured for keys like XF86audioLowerVolume and another combination too (win key problaly), the first key references the equivalent key in those multimedia keys (if they are correctly accepted by the drivers and OS configurations), so sometimes they are available and sometimes not (which makes it simply work by default), but yes you can use another combination or configure it as you wish :slight_smile:

Note: topic has been moved to a more correct category / section :slight_smile: