x11 keyboard input from text console

[Gregory Nowak]

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Hi everyone,
I have what I think is a rather interesting question. Does anyone know
of a seamless method of inputting x11 keyboard events from a text
console? Let me explain.

I have a very old laptop here running gnu/linux without gnome, or even
xorg, since the machine is way too old to run gnome, and I have no use
for a full x11 environment which I can't access. I want to use this
machine as a rdp client to either VirtualBox's vrde server, or a
windows machine.

So, I installed Xvfb, and rdesktop. I can connect and get sound from
the remote machines, but any key strokes typed in the console where
rdesktop is running go to the console of the client, and not out to
the remote system. A solution I found for this is a program called
xdotool, which can send keyboard/mouse events to an x display. It does
what I want,but is ... well ... awkward to say the least.

For example, say I want to login on a text console of a machine
running inside of VirtualBox through rdp. I can tell xdotool to read
from stdin, and a login, and a logout would look like this:

type 'user'
key Return
type 'password'
key Return
type 'exit'
key Return

Since xdotool can use scripts, logins and some other things can be
scripted, but that's not possible for everything. Typing this e-mail
in such a way for example would be out of the question! Then, we get
into the mess of controlling speakup on a remote virtual machine, or a
windows screen reader. I'd probably need something that can send scan
codes here.

I think the ideal solution would be something that I can setup from
inittab on an unused console. Unfortunately, I haven't found such a
beast. This does bring in the problem of switching consoles on the
client, but let's not go there yet.

The other possibility would be setting up a minimal x environment
which I could run rdesktop in. I don't know though what are the
minimum packages required for this in debian, and how much of a
challenge it would be to launch rdesktop, and exit from it without
something like orca.

Any Thoughts?

Greg


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