Just got an update via the ppa, 1.6.1, for retroarch and now my keyboard no longer accepts input. The 8bit nes pro I use as a gamepad works perfectly fine, but keyboard input is no longer accepted (I can’t exit the game with the escape key, save state and so on). When starting MAME games I see a cursor on the screen that I can move but hitting tab, esc, etc does nothing.
Version/features https://pastebin.com/anssyqc3
Retroarch.cfg https://pastebin.com/JYmrmrj6
I think you need to set udev permissions, like this:
You can also try just using a different input driver, like linuxraw instead of udev.
Your answer seems better than what I did. So I removed my retroarch.cfg and had it generate a new one. Turns out I had
input_driver = "udev" input_joypad_driver = "udev"
and changing it to
input_driver = "x" input_joypad_driver = "udev"
fixed the issue. Now both my gamepad and keyboard are responding again. Is there any downside to game performance with the change to “x”?
not that I know of, other than requiring a running X-Server for input to work. That is, if you try to launch via KMS, it won’t have keyboard input. If that’s not something you use, you should be good to go.
I got paranoid to any affect on performance and implemented your solution instead. Plus the documentation recommends using udev over x. Put the retroarch.cfg back to
input_driver = "udev" input_joypad_driver = "udev"
and added 99-evdev.rules in /etc/udev/rules.d/
with this contents:
KERNEL=="event*", NAME="input/%k", MODE="666"
Thanks. Your answer help me to fix this problem. I change only the input_driver to x, and retroarch navigation begin to work good with keyboard.
I just had this problem occur to me today. I’ve been using Retroarch fine with keyboard input for like 4 or 5 months now and suddenly, it no longer responds to keyboard input. I looked at retroarch.cfg and “input_driver” already is set to “x” so I’m completely lost. I also tried the “linuxraw” suggestion and it still didn’t take input. I’m not sure what could have possibly changed between the last time I used it (less than a week ago) and today for it to magically stop working.
I don’t understand this udev permissions thing or how to do it, but it doesn’t seem relevant anyway since I’m not even set to use udev for the input_driver in the first place.
If you move your retroarch.cfg somewhere else temporarily, does it fix it?
Hmm… yes, it does. I wonder what bugged the config file though. It’s gonna be annoying to have to set all my settings over again.
You can try bisecting your config. That is, move it away, create a blank one and copy in half of the lines. If the problem is fixed, the offending option is in the other half of the options, so make a new empty one and paste in the half of the lines. Then, delete half of those. If the problem goes away, the offending option is in that half, if not the other. Rinse and repeat as needed until you can pin it down.