This little HOWTO is nothing special, and have been mentioned at http://forum.mymediasystem.org before, but actually every second year I need one special command in order to teach MMS about the new Multimedia keys of my new keyboard. And guess what – I have alwas to look for it. To be precise, there are two such commands. To retrieve keycodes or scan codes from your keyboard use one of these:

• showkey

  This little guy doesn’t need a X display, and can be used on the console. But the information it provides isn’t by far as detailed as the one from the guys going be mentioned next:

• xev

  I’m personally using this one. The keycode is colored red in the output below. It’s the keycode for the letter ‘f’. You will need an X display for it, so it’s not suited for the use at a console.

  .
  .
  KeyRelease event, serial 27, synthetic NO, window 0x200001,
      root 0x100, subw 0x0, time 25988078, (476,401), root:(2142,872),
      state 0x0, keycode 41 (keysym 0x66, f), same_screen YES,
      XLookupString gives 1 bytes: (66) "f"
      XFilterEvent returns: False
  .
  .
  

You can take this code now (replace ‘f’ with your key code for your homebutton), and place it e.g. into the MyMediaSystem keyboard config file /etc/mms/input/keyboard/default if you want to map you Multimedia ‘HOME‘
button on your keyboard for jumping back to MMS’ start menu:

general,action,ENTER
general,second_action,SPACE
general,startmenu,b
general,startmenu,#180
general,options,o
general,search,s
general,page_down,PGDOWN

You have simple you copy the line, if you like pre preserve the functionality of the ‘b’ button for jumping back to the start menu, and paste it below, with only replacing the 'b' with #180.

MMS must be restarted after this change.