'input-remapper-control --list' without 'sudo'

[DreadPirateLynx]

When I run input-remapper-control --list on my system, I get the list of connected devices, but someone else I'm helping requires the use of sudo to get any information. What is causing this and how can we remove the sudo requirement for them?

[jonasBoss]

This is due to the permissions for the /dev/input/eventXX files, I think those are set by udev-rules and can differ from device to device.
On my system some devices can be read without root permissions while others can not.

You could write your own udev-rules to update the permissions in my experience this can have interesting consequences:
I have a PS5 controller which has a gyroscope builtin. When I update the permissions the controller and its gyroscope would show up as 2 different joysticks on my system. This causes some games to get very confused.

[negora]

I'm sorry for resurrecting this thread, but I'm interested in loading presets without the need of entering my password every time (in other words: without doing sudo).

I'm using Input Remapper 2.0.1 in Debian 12.5. My event* devices have rw permissions for user root and group input. I've added my user to the input group, but I'm still getting an empty list when I run input-remapper-control --list-devices without sudo.

My plan is to automatically change the preset when a window is focused (thanks to KDE Plasma shortcuts and events). I doubt that the preset load is fast enough to make it usable, but I want to give it a try.

For now, I'm using an alternative method. I've remapped my mouse buttons (with Input Remapper) to some global keyboard shortcuts defined in Plasma. Then, these shortcuts are linked to a shell script that reads a parameter representing the key combination and, with the help of xdotool, I find out which window is active/focused, the application it belongs to (using the WM_NAME property of the window) and run the real shortcut that is specific to the application.

This is a simple diagram: Input Remapper -> Plasma shortcuts -> Shell script -> xdotool. It's working fast enough for my purposes, but I would love getting rid of the global shortcuts if possible.

Thank you.

[nbngtn]

omg how do you get the app to run on Debian? I'm running trixie with kde. Whenever I try to open up the app, it will just show a loading taskbar icon for a while, then disappear as if it closed itself. Been trying all sorts of way to make it work but cant :(

[negora]

@nbngtn I guess you're referring to the graphical application. Have you tried to run input-remapper-gtk from the command line and see what's the output?

Right now, input-remapper-gtk runs fine in my machine, but I believe I had a problem similar to yours months ago (although I use Bookworm, not Trixie). Maybe I solved it by adding my user to the group input, but I'm not sure...

[mercster]

Sorry to revive as well... on Fedora I have the same setup (group 'input' has rw access to /dev/input/event*)... so the GUI should be able to run without root permissions after I added my user to the group. I want to try and find where to rip out the part of the program that prompts for root password, but I dunno where to start, python is weird.

EDIT: I do see my devices as my non-root user with --list. Just need to get the gui to stop...