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linuxkeyboard
Andrew_1510
Andrew_1510

Reputation: 13526

CapsLock, NumLock, Insert, how to show keyboard status on screen when keyboard has no LED

When keyboard has no LED, for Linux machine, is there an easy way to do this? By Command Line, Python, Perl or Ruby, to show when keyboard has CapLock, NumLock activated?

Upvotes: 6

Views: 8483

Answers (5)

WoodrowShigeru
WoodrowShigeru

Reputation: 1594

If you have multiple language input-sources installed, you'll likely have a language switching menu in the top-right corner (i.e. [ en | fr ]). Its context menu has an option "Show Keyboard Layout" which has its own virtual LED indicator.

However, it only stays in sync if that window has the focus. If you e.g. toggle numlock in gedit but keep this window open in the background, you'll see that it keeps its old state.

Upvotes: 0

Bruno Regno
Bruno Regno

Reputation: 91

If you want to use the command line to check led status use:

xset q | grep LED

This will return a number resulting from the binary addition of the led status lights. Caps lock is the first bit, Numlock is the second... the rest you need to experiment as I have only used those two.

Upvotes: 9

cartoonist
cartoonist

Reputation: 6212

If you are using gnome 3 Lock Keys extension may be useful.

Upvotes: 2

Kevin
Kevin

Reputation: 2929

This is a good question, also applies if you have a virtual machine.

I found the following code worked well on my Ubuntu lucid VM running on ESXi 5.1 with no hardware LEDs on a mx5500 revolution Bluetooth keyboard combo.

http://freecode.com/projects/numlockx

tar -xzf numlockx-1.2.tar.gz
./configure
make
./numlockx on

You may not be able to see the current state, but at least you can force it to be what you want.

Upvotes: 1

Itay Grudev
Itay Grudev

Reputation: 7434

Check this post about the key-mon tool.

http://www.webupd8.org/2009/12/key-mon-displays-keyboard-and-mouse.html

As far as I know there is also a CLI command to check the status in the package.

Upvotes: 1

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