kbdrate(8) — Linux manual page
KBDRATE(8) System Manager's Manual KBDRATE(8)
NAME
kbdrate - reset the keyboard repeat rate and delay time
SYNOPSIS
kbdrate [options...]
DESCRIPTION
kbdrate is used to change the keyboard repeat rate and delay
time. The delay is the amount of time that a key must be
depressed before it will start to repeat.
Using kbdrate without any options will reset the repeat rate to
10.9 characters per second (cps) and the delay to 250
milliseconds (ms) for Intel- and M68K-based systems. These are
the IBM defaults. On SPARC-based systems it will reset the repeat
rate to 5 cps and the delay to 200 ms.
OPTIONS
-r, --rate=NUMBER
Change the keyboard repeat rate to NUMBER cps. For Intel-
based systems, the allowable range is from 2.0 to 30.0
cps. Only certain, specific values are possible, and the
program will select the nearest possible value to the one
specified. The possible values are given, in characters
per second, as follows: 2.0, 2.1, 2.3, 2.5, 2.7, 3.0, 3.3,
3.7, 4.0, 4.3, 4.6, 5.0, 5.5, 6.0, 6.7, 7.5, 8.0, 8.6,
9.2, 10.0, 10.9, 12.0, 13.3, 15.0, 16.0, 17.1, 18.5, 20.0,
21.8, 24.0, 26.7, 30.0. For SPARC-based systems, the
allowable range is from 0 (no repeat) to 50 cps.
-d, --delay=NUMBER
Change the delay to NUMBER milliseconds. For Intel-based
systems, the allowable range is from 250 to 1000 ms, in
250 ms steps. For SPARC systems, possible values are
between 10 ms and 1440 ms, in 10 ms steps.
-s, --silent
Silent. No messages are printed.
-h, --help
Display a help text.
-V, --version
Display a version number and exit.
BUGS
Not all keyboards support all rates.
Not all keyboards have the rates mapped in the same way.
Setting the repeat rate on the Gateway AnyKey keyboard does not
work. If someone with a Gateway figures out how to program the
keyboard, please send mail to util-linux@math.uio.no.
All this is very architecture dependent. Nowadays kbdrate first
tries the KDKBDREP and KIOCSRATE ioctls. (The former usually
works on an m68k/i386 machine, the latter for SPARC.) When these
ioctls fail an ioport interface.
FILES
/etc/rc.local
/dev/port
COLOPHON
This page is part of the kbd (Linux keyboard tools) project.
Information about the project can be found at
⟨http://www.kbd-project.org/⟩. If you have a bug report for this
manual page, send it to kbd@lists.altlinux.org. This page was
obtained from the project's upstream Git repository
⟨https://github.com/legionus/kbd.git⟩ on 2024-06-14. (At that
time, the date of the most recent commit that was found in the
repository was 2024-05-20.) If you discover any rendering
problems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe there
is a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or you have
corrections or improvements to the information in this COLOPHON
(which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
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