Need help with Input Remapper

General
1

Hi all,

There is a neat app in Bluefin called input remapper which allows you to remap keys. With the newer kernels it it now allows me (thank God!) to remap the “Copilot key” back to the right Ctrl button, as shown here:

image
image1052×747 45.9 KB

So, the problem is that I would like to run this automatically at startup. If I run this on login, it asks for privilege escalation (so I have to enter my password) to activate. I noticed that it seems to run a systemd service, here is my systemctl status relevant bit:

           └─user.slice
             ├─user-0.slice
             │ ├─session-c22.scope
             │ │ ├─691495 /usr/bin/python3 /usr/bin/input-remapper-service --hide-info
             │ │ ├─691497 /usr/bin/python3 /usr/bin/input-remapper-service --hide-info
             │ │ └─955752 /usr/bin/python3 /usr/bin/input-remapper-service --hide-info
             │ ├─session-c36.scope
             │ │ └─954358 /usr/bin/python3 /usr/bin/input-remapper-reader-service

I exited the GUI and tried to start the service from command line, but I get this error:

× input-remapper.service - Service to inject keycodes without the GUI application
     Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/input-remapper.service; disabled; preset: disabled)
    Drop-In: /usr/lib/systemd/system/service.d
             └─10-timeout-abort.conf, 50-keep-warm.conf
     Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Sat 2025-05-03 08:48:29 BST; 48min ago
 Invocation: 2df26fd147094d4b91cbad674b35bcdd
    Process: 928095 ExecStart=/usr/bin/input-remapper-service (code=exited, status=9)
   Main PID: 928095 (code=exited, status=9)
   Mem peak: 34.2M
        CPU: 570ms

May 03 08:48:29 host systemd[1]: Starting input-remapper.service - Service to inject keycodes without the GUI application...
May 03 08:48:29 host input-remapper-service[928095]: input-remapper-service 2.1.1  https://github.com/sezanzeb/input-remapper
May 03 08:48:29 host input-remapper-service[928095]: python-evdev 1.9.1
May 03 08:48:29 host input-remapper-service[928095]: ERROR: "/root/.config/input-remapper-2/config.json" does not exist
May 03 08:48:29 host input-remapper-service[928095]: ERROR: Is the service already running? (name already exists on the bus)
May 03 08:48:29 host input-remapper-service[928095]: Stopping all injections
May 03 08:48:29 host systemd[1]: input-remapper.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=9/n/a
May 03 08:48:29 host systemd[1]: input-remapper.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
May 03 08:48:29 host systemd[1]: Failed to start input-remapper.service - Service to inject keycodes without the GUI application.

How does one go about running this service on startup with systemctl as root? (headless)

I would hope that like LACT (more recently) the GUI would be able to connect to the running service to reconfigure it and not require privilege escalation…

1 Like
2

Looks like since you’re trying to start as root, it is looking for the config in the root accou t’s home.

Have you tried enabling the service, rather than starting?

sudo systemctl enable input-remapper.service

It should start on the next boot.

3

Thank you for the suggestion.

So, there seems to be a bit of an issue with the application which prints this misleading message.

In fact if you start the service before starting the application, it works (besides the missing root config) and follows the configuration of the logged in user (which is what should happen).

In order to star the service without rebooting I ran sudo pkill -f input-remapper as per the linked thread and I was able to start the service.

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