Track keyboard and mouse usage

[dfaber]

Hi Francois,
 Thank you for providing me the evdev link! That was exactly what I was
looking for. Instead of sudo'ing the script, I changed /dev/input/
directory to be world readable.
After that, I had to change the way a file was accessed in evdev.py to:
Line No: 91         #self.fd = os.open(filename, os.O_RDWR |
os.O_NONBLOCK)
self.fd = os.open(filename, os.O_RDONLY | os.O_NONBLOCK)

Runs great.

Thanks again.

francois.schnell at gmail.com wrote:
> Hello dfaber,
>
> I had the same problem not long ago. I tried to use the Xlib since its
> obvious the X server  has all the events but I couldn't have the mouse
> events if my app was out of focus. If you have a way to do that I'm
> really interested.
>
> Anyway I found this to be a good introduction to Xlib:
> http://users.actcom.co.il/~choo/lupg/tutorials/xlib-programming/xlib-programming.html#preface
>
> Since I didn't find a way to do it I went down to the source of the
> events which are provided by the evdev drivers:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evdev
>
> Fortunately you can use Python to access it:
> http://svn.navi.cx/misc/trunk/python/evdev/
>
> First you need to know your input devices, search the eventX in
> relation to your device here:
> cat /proc/bus/input/devices
>
> Then you can do:
> sudo python evdev.py /dev/input/eventX  # where X is the event number
> in relation to your device (kb is usually zero)
>
> It works well but there is two problems with this solution:
> - the root access is annoying (but I'll have to try Diez suggestion)
> - The X event number of the mouse can change from a PC to another one
> (you need to check the PC first with that cat command and search for
> your "mouse"
>
> francois
>
>
>
>
>
> dfaber wrote:
> > Hi all,
> >  I have been searching for a keyboard and mouse tracker on linux. I've
> > read solutions (watch at sourceforge) which look at /proc/interrupts to
> > check keyboard or mouse activity. I also read one post where "watch"
> > seems to have difficulty tracking usb keyboards and mice. So, I'm out
> > of ideas here.
> >
> > My goal are:
> > 1. Check keyboard activity. I'm not interested in logging which keys
> > are pressed or record them.
> > 2. Monitor mouse activity. I want to know the pointer position,
> > left-clicks, right-clicks, middle-mouse button usage.
> >
> > I know that these things can be done in a GUI environment. I am looking
> > for some approach that helps me do this system-wide.
> >
> > Any suggestions would be welcome. Again, I am looking for trackers on
> > Linux based machines.