Re: input: evdev.c EVIOCGRAB semantics question

["Zephaniah E. Hull" <warp@aehallh.com>]

On Mon, Aug 14, 2006 at 10:20:09AM -0400, Dmitry Torokhov wrote:
> On 8/12/06, Zephaniah E. Hull <warp@aehallh.com> wrote:
> >On Sat, Aug 12, 2006 at 08:00:47PM -0400, Dmitry Torokhov wrote:
> >> On Saturday 12 August 2006 12:52, Zephaniah E. Hull wrote:
> >> > I can dust off the masking patch sometime here if Dmitry thinks that
> >> > he'd be willing to see a second method for this in addition to 
> >grabbing,
> >> > adding support to xf86-input-evdev would be trivial, and the same could
> >> > probably be said for the wacom driver that does grabbing at the moment.
> >> >
> >>
> >> I would not mind if we get it working right ;) Do we need to turn off
> >> "undesirable" handlers or do we want to limit output to one particular
> >> handler? I'd prefer the former, if possible. Do we keep a counter or
> >> set of counters so several processes can mask output, etc. Can we keep
> >> event delivery somewhat fast?
> >
> >EVIOCGRAB provides for the latter, though it seems to go too far and
> >mess with sysrq as well.
> >
> >My old old EVIOCMASK patch just added a long (or was it an int?  It's
> >been a while) to each device struct, and to each handler struct, and if
> >they had bits set in common then they received the events, and if not
> >they did not.
> >
> >That was the cost of a quick & operation and a branch in the input event
> >path, so not too expensive, though my memory seems to indicate that I
> >tried to play some evil games to invert the bits first to allow things
> >to be zero inited.
> >
> >I'd definitely want to just rewrite it these days, but that approach is
> >fast, and if we define it something along the lines of 'bit 0 is the
> >kernel console layer, bit 1 is any further handlers in the kernel like
> >/dev/input/mice or the joystick interface, the rest belong to userspace'
> >that gives userspace plenty of bits for odd policy decisions.
> >
> >One obvious catch is that programs would have to be careful to reset the
> >mask when leaving, though having the sysrq handler always present and
> >adding controls for 'reset input device masks' would be one escape
> >route for X masking keyboard events from the kernel, then crashing
> >messily.
> >
> >We probably don't want to automaticly reset on close by a program that
> >did the masking, as I can see some cases where someone might want to use
> >a utility that adjusts the masks on input devices.
> >
> >
> >On a side note, if we mess with sysrq for the masking, we should add a
> >'ungrab all input devices' one as well.
> >
> 
> I've been thinking about all of this and all of it is very fragile and
> unwieldy and I am not sure that we really need another ioctl after
> all. The only issue we have right now is that mousedev delivers
> undesirable events through /dev/input/mice while there is better
> driver listening to /dev/input/eventX and they clash with each other.
> Still, /dev/input/mice is nice for dealing with hotplugging of simple
> USB mice. So can't we make mousedev only multiplex devices that are
> not opened directly (where directly is one of mouseX, jsX, tsX, or
> evdevX)? We could even control this behavior through a module
> parameter. Then noone (normally) would need to use EVIOCGRAB.

Sadly, the case of using EVIOCGRAB for mice to stop the use of
/dev/input/mice is actually not the primary usage.

xf86-input-evdev will more or less happily continue talking to a mouse
that it can't grab, however things become somewhat more problematic when
it comes to keyboards.

X needs to keep the keyboard driver from receiving events while it has
it open, however that being the default behavior would be, ah,
undesirable because just running evtest on the event node of the
keyboard could abruptly make it unkillable. (Single keyboard system.)

An alternative would be to either redefine the semantics of EVIOCGRAB,
add another value to it, or another ioctl entirely, which explicitly
tells the kernel to stop listening for the console keyboard handler,
the multiplexer, etc.

I'm not horribly attached to any specific means for doing it, except
that it needs to either explicitly fail or fallback to 'X has this
keyboard, the kernel does not' if we don't support it. (Trying it on a
2.4 kernel or a current 2.6 kernel, for example.)

Quite simply, having the X server killed when someone hits ctrl-C in an
xterm is entirely unacceptable, and so we need to make sure that it
can't happen.  Beyond that, throwing support in for a less exclusive
grab is fairly trivial.

Zephaniah E. Hull.

-- 
	  1024D/E65A7801 Zephaniah E. Hull <warp@aehallh.com>
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"And now, little kittens, we're going to run across red-hot
motherboards, with our bare feet." -- Buzh.

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