Assigning a character to a function key

[Jarod Wilson]

On Dec 17, 2009, at 6:13 PM, Stephen Ronan wrote:

> Hi
> I'm helping someone with a problem laptop. I've put 
> Ubuntu-based Linux Mint on it, which is working well. The two 
> major remaing problems are:
> 1) it's reporting lots of bad sectors on the hard drive
> 2) The "u" key doesn't work.
> 
> In regard to 1), I'm planning to use Spinrite, but am curious as 
> to whether there may be any free programs that similarly can help 
> with bad sector problem?

Um. Why not just buy a replacement hard drive? They're dirt-cheap these days. I wouldn't trust a drive that is chock full of bad sectors myself, anyway.

> In regard to 2, is there a way to assign "u" to a function key? 
> I'd be grateful for any advice on a good way to do that.

There is, but I don't have any sort of howto I can provide. The kernel input subsystem has setkeycode/getkeycode functions that allow remapping keys to different things, but I'm not sure offhand what sort of userspace interface you'd use for that.

-- 
Jarod Wilson
jarod-ajLrJawYSntWk0Htik3J/w at public.gmane.org