Changing the Microsoft 4000's Zoom Keys in Ubuntu

@edent — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 12:30:15 +0000

I'm in love with my keyboard! The Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 is a dream to type on. Large, well spaced keys, split keyboard, and a whole host of extra media buttons. There's only one tiny problem. Two of the buttons don't work in Linux - specifically, the keyboard scroll buttons. This is a long standing bug in Linux, but luckily it is fairly easy to fix.

Using Florian Diesch's tutorial at Ask Ubuntu, I've come up with this simple guide to get your keyboard working.

Update For 14.04: Don't follow this guide, please use this guide on AskUbuntu.

Open a terminal. Sorry, this is all going to be command prompt based!
Install the program evtest
```
sudo apt-get install evtest
```
You will need to find which input "event" corresponds to your keyboard. Run the following command
```
sudo evtest /dev/input/event5
```
When you press the scroll key on your keyboard, you should see an output like
```
Event: time 1325072953.278713, type 4 (Misc), code 4 (ScanCode), value c022e
Event: time 1325072953.278729, type 1 (Key), code 109 (PageDown), value 1
Event: time 1325072953.278752, -------------- Report Sync ------------
```
If you don't, cancel (using CTRL+C) and try another event number. Start at event0 and work your way up.
Let's see what the keys are currently mapped to. Type the command
```
sudo /lib/udev/keymap -i input/event5
```
(or whatever "event" number you need). You should see an output like
```
scan code: 0xC022D   key code: zoomin
scan code: 0xC022E   key code: zoomout
```
We need to create a file which contains the new keymapping. To do this, type
```
sudo nano /lib/udev/keymaps/microsoft-4000
```
Insert the following two lines into the file
```
0xC022D pageup
0xC022E pagedown
```
If you would rather scroll line-by-line, you can use
```
0xC022D up
0xC022E down
```
Save the file by pressing CTRL+X.

Now, let's implement the remapped keys. Type

sudo /lib/udev/keymap input/event5 /lib/udev/keymaps/microsoft-4000

Your scroll buttons should now be working! If not... errr... try again?
Assuming it is working, we need to make this permanent so that we don't have to type in a command every time we reboot. To open the keymapping file, type
```
sudo nano /lib/udev/rules.d/95-keymap.rules
```

Scroll through the file until you see

#
# The following are external USB keyboards
#

LABEL="keyboard_usbcheck"

Past in the following line

ENV{ID_VENDOR_ID}=="045e", ENV{ID_MODEL_ID}=="00db", RUN+="keymap $name microsoft-4000"

The line needs to be above

GOTO="keyboard_end"

Save the file (CTRL+X).

Reboot.

Hey presto! Your keys will now obey your commands.

Changing the Microsoft 4000’s Zoom Keys in Ubuntu – Terence Eden’s Blog

Changing the Microsoft 4000's Zoom Keys in Ubuntu