How to make Linux ignore a keyboard while keeping it available for my program to read? - linux

Question

I am building some kind of kiosk system and I bought this USB DIY keyboard for it: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07QPXQQ7L
This allows me to have a lot of buttons and they behave like keyboard keys.
I'm writing a program (Perl) that will take the input from that keyboard and do things based on that.
The problem is that I need to have the rest of the system (both X and the TTYs) ignore that keyboard so that it won't type random things in the terminal or in the window manager. In other words, the system should disregard it but the device itself must still be available in /dev/input/...
I don't need a real keyboard to control the machine because I connect via VNC and SSH.
Bonus points if you know how to read from a /dev/input/... keyboard and end up with letters typed just like with STDIN in a terminal.
Thanks!

Answer 1

I found the solution here where someone wanted the exact same thing in the case of a barcode reader:
https://serverfault.com/questions/385260/bind-usb-keyboard-exclusively-to-specific-application/976557#976557
SUBSYSTEM=="input", ACTION=="add", ATTRS{idVendor}=="xxxx", ATTRS{idProduct}=="yyyy", RUN+="/bin/sh -c 'echo remove > /sys$env{DEVPATH}/uevent'"
ACTION=="add", ATTRS{idVendor}=="xxxx", ATTRS{idProduct}=="yyyy", SYMLINK+="diykeyboard"
And then replace xxxx and yyyy by the Vendor and Product ID as found in lsusb. So in my case 1c4f and 0002:
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 1c4f:0002 SiGma Micro Keyboard TRACER Gamma Ivory
The udevadm control --reload thing didn't do it for me, I had to reboot.
Then in theory the data typed on the keyboard should be available at /dev/diykeyboard (the SYMLINK variable).
Now in my case unfortunately there are multiple events that match this vendor+product, and to match the right one I needed to add DEVPATH=="*:1.0/*", KERNEL=="event*" in the second line where it creates the SYMLINK. And then surprise it did not create the link in /dev so I had to do something dirty, create a link myself with ln:
SUBSYSTEM=="input", ACTION=="add", ATTRS{idVendor}=="1c4f", ATTRS{idProduct}=="0002", RUN+="/bin/sh -c 'echo remove > /sys$env{DEVPATH}/uevent'"
SUBSYSTEM=="input", ACTION=="add", ATTRS{idVendor}=="1c4f", ATTRS{idProduct}=="0002", DEVPATH=="*:1.0/*", KERNEL=="event*", RUN+="/bin/sh -c 'ln -sf /dev/input/$kernel /diykeyboard'"
(don't create the link in /tmp since udev happens before the mounting of /tmp at boot)
From there I can read from /diykeyboard (which usually points to /dev/input/event0) either with evtest which shows the keys typed, or directly with my program and then decoding the scancodes.