Global Keystroke counter?

browny_amiga · 03-30-2015, 06:16 AM

Hi,

I type a lot, a TON and am curious how much, so I thought it might be very interesting to have a tool count the total keystrokes I do every day on my linux laptop. Is there a tool that can do that? If not, how can I build it myself? It would need to be global though, meaning all keystrokes, not just when a program has focus (and that has been the problem so far)

Thanks for any pointers,

Markus

rtmistler · 03-30-2015, 12:12 PM

I don't know of any tools and besides adding code to the keyboard driver and rebuilding your kernel, you can look at the /dev/input/ tree. For instance mine has a by-id subdirectory where it has links showing that /dev/input/event3 is one of my keyboard driver files. Turns out if I do "sudo cat /dev/input/event3" it shows me a bunch of binary stuff. I can also do "suco hexdump /dev/input/event3" and then it shows definitive packets where 3-4 of them come out with each keystroke, probably some indicating the down key and some indicating the key release. You could either determine what that entire protocol is, or instead figure out if it's always exactly 3 or 4 records per keystroke and then write a program to look at this file and count the number of records transcended over a certain time.

If I were in your shoes I'd write a program to measure that, see how much I did type, and then send a post out to the forum challenging people to exceed you, that is without cheating and distorting the rules.

metaschima · 03-30-2015, 01:47 PM

Try:

Code:

#include <linux/input.h>
#include <fcntl.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdint.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <signal.h>

static uint64_t count;
static int fd;

void termination_handler (int signum)
{
	printf ("Characters typed = %lu\n", count);

	// closed
	close (fd);

	_exit (0);
}

int main (int argc, char *argv[])
{
	if (argc < 2)
	{
		fprintf (stderr, "Usage:\n %s <device>\n", argv[0]);
		return 1;
	}

	fd = open (argv[1], O_RDONLY); // ! closed
	if (-1 == fd)
	{
		fprintf (stderr, "ERROR: Cannot open %s\n", argv[1]);
		return 1;
	}

	struct input_event ev;

	struct sigaction sa;
	sa.sa_handler = termination_handler;
	sigemptyset (&sa.sa_mask);
	sa.sa_flags = 0;
	sigaction (SIGINT, &sa, NULL);

	while (read(fd, &ev, sizeof(struct input_event)) != -1)
	{
		if (ev.type == 1 && ev.value != 0)
		{
			count++;
		}
	}

	return 0;
}

Check 'cat /proc/bus/input/devices' for input device nodes for your keyboard, it will usually be something like '/dev/input/event3' with a different number than 3. It will print the number of characters typed when you press Ctrl-C.

browny_amiga · 05-12-2015, 03:52 AM

Complicated.... but workable. Thanks for the pointers!