TPB (Thinkpad OSD Daemon) only works in runlevel 3

shicky256 · 07-16-2015, 04:25 PM

I run a ThinkPad T43, which has some media buttons and other hotkeys (brightness up/down, ThinkLight, etc), so it's nice to have a utility to monitor the status of the various buttons, especially because the computer's so old that they are for hardware so XFCE's built in OSD won't detect anything. Because of this, I use TPB, a program that works in every distro I've tried, and in Slackware-- but only when you make your default runlevel 3. I do all of my work in X, so when I make runlevel 4 the default (to show a display manager on startup) it doesn't work, and instead gives me a

Code:

Unable to initialize xosd. Running without onsceen [sic] display.

error. I'm running the newest xosd and newest tpb versions, and everything works fine in runlevel 3.

Alien Bob · 07-16-2015, 05:46 PM

How did you build that tpb package? When I had a T43 and used tpb, I needed to add a udev rule to fix the access permissions of the /dev/nvram file.

Note that in Slackware's runlevel 3 your user account is dynamically added to several groups that allow you to manage your hardware (after all, logging in to the console means you are _at_ your computer). Users who login at runlevel 4 are possibly remote users, and are by default not added to groups like floppy, audio, cdrom, video, scanner, power, plugdev etc... you will have to add your user account to these groups explicitly.

shicky256 · 07-16-2015, 06:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Alien Bob

How did you build that tpb package? When I had a T43 and used tpb, I needed to add a udev rule to fix the access permissions of the /dev/nvram file.

Note that in Slackware's runlevel 3 your user account is dynamically added to several groups that allow you to manage your hardware (after all, logging in to the console means you are _at_ your computer). Users who login at runlevel 4 are possibly remote users, and are by default not added to groups like floppy, audio, cdrom, video, scanner, power, plugdev etc... you will have to add your user account to these groups explicitly.

I just used the "./configure && make && sudo make install" instructions on the website. I get this error even when I run tpb as root, so /dev/nvram permissions shouldn't matter, and neither should group permissions.

Alien Bob · 07-17-2015, 06:38 AM

You can try my old SlackBuild script here: http://www.slackware.com/~alien/slackbuilds/tpb/build/
I just noticed that even in 2008 I already prepared my SlackBuild scripts for x86_64 ... amazing. I never used BlueWhite64 or Slamd64 myself.

Totoro-kun · 07-21-2015, 01:06 PM

NOTE: This not really work, please skip to next post

Hello,
I happen to have a ThinkPad X41 with Slackware-14.1 (32bit), which is technically close to T43, so decided to try out Alien's slackbuild of tpb. I had to install xosd dependency from slackbuilds.org first. Then SlackBuild worked and I've got the package.

It seems, that udev rule for nvram is outdated, because it shown errors. I do not know how to write these rules, so I've just removed it (rm /etc/udev/rules.d/01-nvram.rules).

Anyway, if you run tpb -d as root (in terminal), osd works! There for I've wrote rc.tpb file:

Code:

#!/bin/sh
start() {
	echo "Starting ThinkPad buttons daemon:  /usr/bin/tpb -d"
	if [ ! -e /var/run/tpb.pid ]; then
           /usr/bin/tpb -d
	   pidof tpb > /var/run/tpb.pid
	else
	echo "ThinkPad buttons daemon already running!"
	fi
}

stop() {
        echo "Stopping ThinkPad buttons daemon."
  	if [ -e /var/run/tpb.pid ]; then
    	   kill $(cat /var/run/tpb.pid)
    	   rm -f /var/run/tpb.pid
  	else
    	echo "ThinkPad buttons daemon is not running."
  	fi
}

restart() {
  stop
  sleep 1
  start
}


status() {
  	if [ -e /var/run/tpb.pid ]; then
   	echo "ThinkPad buttons daemon is running."
  	else
    	echo "ThinkPad buttons daemon is stopped."
    	   exit 1;
  	fi
}

case "$1" in
    start)
        start
        ;;
    stop)
        stop
        ;;
    restart)
        restart
        ;;
    status)
	status
	;;
    *)
        echo "Usage:  {start|stop|restart|status}"
        exit 1
        ;;
esac

Just place it in /etc/rc.d and then add these lines in /etc/rc.d/rc.local:

Code:

if [ -x /etc/rc.d/rc.tpb ]; then
  /etc/rc.d/rc.tpb start
fi

If you give x permission (chmod +x /etc/rc.d/rc.tpb) it will start tpb daemon on system boot.

There is even configuration file /etc/tpbrc. Nice!

Hope this helps

Totoro-kun · 07-21-2015, 02:12 PM

Sorry, the above does not really work, since tpb has to be started while X is running. However, after some research I was able to make it work. Here are the steps:

1. Edit/create udev rule /etc/udev/rules.d/01-nvram.rules:

Code:

KERNEL=="nvram", GROUP="kmem", MODE="0660"

2. Add your user to kmem group:

Code:

# usermod -a -G kmem your_username

3. Find a way to austart following command via your DE (I use MATE so System -> Autostart applications -> Add):

Code:

tpb -d

4. Reboot and enjoy