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[Jonathan Clarke <jonathan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Thanks for the pointer Mario.

I have patched and tested the latest lirc packages from lucid. I have
uploaded a bzr branch to Launchpad and requested a merge to lucid-
proposed. The debdiff is also attached.

For the needs of the SRU:

- Impact of this bug: This bug renders the "--uinput" of lirc useless.
This options allows remote controls to input commands like key strokes
(as you would with a multimedia keyboard with "play", "next/previous",
"volume up/down", etc buttons). This is obviously a very simple and
attractive way to use a remote control with Ubuntu, and is recommended
in many tutorials (including on help.ubuntu.com). Currently, in lucid,
the buttons pressed on the remote have no effect (until the lircd daemon
is stopped or restarted).

- Nominating for SRU, fulfills: (1) have an obviously safe patch (it
only concerns the --uinput which is currently non-functional, and is
tested by upstream and other distros)  and (2) affect an application
rather than critical infrastructure packages

- My proposed patch simply includes a patch from upstream (git commit
d987ce9c68239f637dddb9de9f9668f6e8f9fc1d) to fix this problem. It is
included in the 0.8.7~pre3-0ubuntu1 version in maverick, which works
fine.

TEST CASE: A supported remote control and IR receiver are required.
Install the lirc package. Configure /etc/lirc/lircd.conf for your remote, if not already done during package installation (or include a preset from /usr/share/lirc/remotes/). Ensure your remote button presses are detected when running irw. Edit /etc/lirc/hardware.conf and set these keys:
REMOTE_MODULES="uinput"
REMOTE_LIRCD_ARGS="--uinput"
Restart lirc.
Start rhythmbox and enable the "lirc" module. Restart rhythmbox and start playing a song.
Press pause key on the remote and notice that rhythmbox doesn't take any notice.
Stop lirc, and see that rhythmbox then pauses the song.

I see no regression potential for this patch, as it only affects users
running lirc with the --uinput option, which is currently non-functional
with an up-to-date Ubuntu lucid.

** Patch added: "Debdiff to fix this bug in lucid"
   https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/lirc/+bug/567512/+attachment/1557938/+files/lirc-fix-567512.debdiff

-- 
uinput broken for at least Mac mini
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/567512
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Status in “lirc” package in Ubuntu: Fix Released

Bug description:
Binary package hint: lirc

See the mistitled bug #440466 for the background and supposed fix to this bug.

Previously, lircd would inject key events into /dev/input/uinput (according to the lircd manpage, though there is no such file on my system)  when run with the --uinput option and the uinput input module. This worked with the Mac mini remote, except that auto-repeat did not work, and one had to wait about a second between key presses.

According to bug #440466 there was a fix for this bug recently. Only now it is completely broken: pressing keys on the Mac mini remote seems to do nothing. However, when lircd is stopped, all the key presses entered are indeed injected into the keyboard buffer. So in fact they are being queued up somewhere.

This is not great: in Hardy the Mac mini remote worked perfectly out of the box. In Jaunty and Karmic it worked poorly, with considerable manual configuration. In Lucid it doesn't work at all.

I will now go and ping the other bug reports which I made before Karmic was released (mostly simple configuration problems that can be worked around). Sigh.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.04
Package: lirc 0.8.6-0ubuntu4
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.32-21.32-generic 2.6.32.11+drm33.2
Uname: Linux 2.6.32-21-generic i686
Architecture: i386
Date: Tue Apr 20 21:31:35 2010
ProcEnviron:
 SHELL=/bin/bash
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
SourcePackage: lirc