You do not need to be root to access /dev/input/*

[lyiriyah]

/dev/input/* can be used if you are a member of whatever group owns the event handlers, in my case input. You can check with ls -l /dev/input | grep -v by- | head -n 1 | awk '{ print $3 }'.

[lyiriyah]

I'll start working on a way to check file groups and user groups and compare them now

[lyiriyah]

Closing. Duplicate of #312. This really is a large issue. It makes this library untenable for use in many circumstances, which is a shame since it's so good. I guess you can change /dev/uinput's group but that resets every reboot. I think I'll just use python-evdev instead.

[boppreh]

It's not just /dev/input that requires special privileges, it's dumpkeys. And I couldn't find any specific group that allows dumpkeys usage without literally being root, and not using this external program means there's no way to map scan codes to key names.

The only way forward I see is to enable an alternative X-based input event manager, but that's also a (partially) doomed proposition due to the rise of Wayland.

Suggestions welcome.

[glyh]

FYI, https://github.com/gvalkov/python-evdev,
https://gist.github.com/t184256/f4994037a2a204774ef3b9a2b38736dc