dispmanx_vnc not accepting keyboard input

Help and Support Raspberry Pi
1

HI All,

I have dispmanx_vnc running on two OSMC machines. I can connect to both machines with vncviewer but on one of the machines no keyboard input is taken by dispmanx_vnc.
The only difference I found is that when I start dispmanx_vnc after a restart on both machines the info in dmesg is different:

Working OSMC dmesg says:

input: VNCServer SimKey as /devices/virtual/input/input4

Not working OSMC dmesg says:

input: VNCServer SimKey as /devices/virtual/input/input0

On both machines I am using the same start script

sudo modprobe uinput
sudo chmod 666 /dev/uinput
./dispman_vncserver

Any help welcome and if I missed any log files that could potentially help please let me know.

Cheers

Fred

2

Unlikely to be that that’s your problem. input device names are dynamically allocated (input0, input1 and so on) so it doesn’t matter what they are numbered or what order they are in.

You can get a list of input devices by running ‘evtest’, you may need to install the package evtest first.

3

Ok, agree this might not be related and just caused by the fact that one PI has no input devices connected while the other one has. Just that it was the only difference I saw.
Any other idea what could be wrong? Maybe I need to connect a input device for it to work? Also interesting that CEC is not considered a input device.

FYI the output of evtest:

Not working one:

osmc@osmc.ddorf:~$ sudo evtest
No device specified, trying to scan all of /dev/input/event*
USAGE:
Grab mode:
evtest /dev/input/eventX

Query mode: (check exit code)
evtest --query /dev/input/eventX

is one of: EV_KEY, EV_SW, EV_LED, EV_SND
can either be a numerical value, or the textual name of the
key/switch/LED/sound being queried (e.g. SW_DOCK).

Working one:

osmc@osmc.hongkong:~$ sudo evtest
No device specified, trying to scan all of /dev/input/event*
Available devices:
/dev/input/event0: Wireless Air mouse Keyboard
/dev/input/event1: Wireless Air mouse Keyboard
/dev/input/event2: lircd
Select the device event number [0-2]:

4

I have only tried dispmax_vnc once a long time ago on Raspbmc - and for me, keyboard and mouse input also did not work, I could only see the screen.

Later on I read somewhere that input only works if an actual keyboard and/or mouse are physically connected to the Pi as well, but I never did try it to see if that was the case. So try plugging in a keyboard and mouse, reboot and then see if you can control it via vnc.

CEC is handled directly inside Kodi using LibCEC, so doesn’t go through the normal Linux kernel input mechanisms.

5

yep, that will be most likely the solution unfortunately will be 2 weeks still I can plugin a keyboard to test

6

@fzinken , i don’t known if you had time to test this, but i will test it for you tonight.

Let’s stay in touch about our test.

7

Oh, thought I updated the thread but seems I forgot.
Yes, I can confirm as soon as you connect any kind of input device VNC keyboard input works

8

For my case, i simply had to use another source

After compiling all is working “out of the box” without the need to connect any mouse or keyboards.

Tx

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