I wish to use the showkey function to develeop a keylogger. The problem is: the function terminates if no key is pressed for 10 consecutive seconds. I tried using the -t option as suggested in some forums, but my version of showkey doesn't have the option of changing the timeout.

The options I get are:
-h --help display this help text
-a --ascii display the decimal/octal/hex values of the keys
-s --scancodes display only the raw scan-codes
-k --keycodes display only the interpreted keycodes (default).

Is it possible to write a script to use this function and still keep the function active until an interrupt is recieved?

Thanks in advance !

The source code for showkey can be found here:
http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/util...d-1.15.tar.bz2

I looked at the code and observed, that the 10 seconds timeout is hardcoded. Maybe you can modify the source code to overcome this limit?

Otherwise you can call showkey in an endless loop.

If I run it in an endless loop, then multiple calls will be made if previous functions do not time out. Won't that create multiple logs and redundant data?

You do not start infinitely many showkey processes at the same time, but just restart showkey, if it terminates.

How do I code the code for understanding that showkey has terminated and it needs to be restarted?

In bash/sh you will do

Hi! I tried the code in the shell, it is working fine....but when I switch to another app(Word Processor etc), or switch to another terminal....it doesn't work.

Pretty stupid problem now.....it works normally if I remove >>mylog, the function showkey terminates and restarts on its own.

What does the >>mylog mean? Does the showkey function write the captured keypresses, maps it to some data structure present in mylog, and write out the equivalent alphanumeric characters on to the console?