Logitech G15

This article is written for the Logitech G15 but it should work with other keyboards in the G-series produced by Logitech.

Kernel configuration

To be able to use g15daemon used in this article you need to compile your kernel with uinput support

KERNEL

Device Drivers -> 
   Input Device support -> 
      [*] Miscellaneous devices -> 
          <*> User level driver support

make.conf

To get other applications to know about your G15 keyboard you should add the following to your make.conf

FILE /etc/portage/make.conf

LCD_DEVICES="g15"
USE="g15 lcd"

G15Daemon / G15Macro

To get multimedia keys and LCD panel working properly you will need g15daemon, for the M^ and G^ keys to work you will also need g15macro.

root #emerge --ask app-misc/g15daemon app-misc/g15macro

After installing g15daemon and g15macro you should check out the following files before starting anything, normally default values works for everyone.

Note
Note the 24-hour clock format in g15daemon.conf

FILE /etc/conf.d/g15daemon

# Key to switch the client-screens. Default is the MR key,
# Set to "yes" to use L1 key instead (black round key below the LCD, above the multimedia keys).
CLIENT_SWITCH_L1="no"

# Set to "yes" to switch off the lcd backlight when stopping g15daemon.
BACKLIGHT_OFF="no"

FILE /etc/g15daemon.conf

# G15Daemon Configuration File
# any items entered before a [section] header
# will be in the Global config space
# comments you wish to keep should start with a semicolon';'

[Global]
Use MR as Cycle Key: Off

[PLUGIN_LOAD_ORDER]
0: g15plugin_uinput.so
1: g15plugin_clock.so
2: g15plugin_tcpserver.so
TotalPlugins: 3

[PLUGINS]
Linux UINPUT Keyboard Output: Load
Clock: Load
LCDServer: Load

[Keyboard OS Mapping (uinput)]
device: /dev/input/uinput
Lkeys.mapped: 0

[Clock]
24hrFormat: On
ShowDate: On
Digital: On

When finished you can start the g15daemon with

root #/etc/init.d/g15daemon start

And add it to start up as default with

root #/sbin/rc-update add g15daemon default

If everything worked correctly you should now have a clock visible on your LCD-display

Multimedia keys

To have all new keys working in X11, you'll need create a specific xmodmap in your home directory or edit the existent one.

Create the xmodmap

user $cp /usr/share/g15daemon/contrib/xmodmaprc ~/.Xmodmap

Adding keycodes to an existing xmodmap:

user $cat /usr/share/g15daemon/contrib/xmodmaprc >> ~/.Xmodmap

To get the new keys you might need to restart your session or run:

user $xmodmap ~/.Xmodmap

To check if your keys have been mapped correctly you can test them with x11-apps/xev

G & M keys

To get your G^ and M^ keys to work you need to start up g15macro, preferably you should make it start automatically with the rest of your desktop.

user $/usr/bin/g15macro &

Your extra keys should now be working and you should be able to record macro keys by pushing the MR key.

Extra

Optionally you can add the following to your xorg.conf:

FILE /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Option         "XkbModel" "logitech_g15"

External resources