I agree that a more helpful error message would be helpful here. I am an experience Ubuntu terminal user. However, it is not intuitive to me that showkey should require root privileges. I would not have guessed this as a solution to resolve this error.
A new error message could take several forms: Current user cannot access a file descriptor referring to the console. Permission denied. You must run as root user. Are you root? I personally prefer the most descriptive and helpful: Current user cannot access a file descriptor referring to the console. Perhaps you intended to run this as root? -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Touch seeded packages, which is subscribed to kbd in Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1006676 Title: showkey fails with "Couldn't get a file descriptor referring to the console" Status in kbd package in Ubuntu: Invalid Bug description: When invoked in Gnome Terminal 3.0.1 (Ubuntu 11.10), showkey uninformatively exits after reporting: "Couldn't get a file descriptor referring to the console" For one who doesn't know what this means (such as myself), showkey is thus rendered unusable. The man page has no information about this behaviour. Installed kbd package: 1.15.2-3ubuntu1 To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/kbd/+bug/1006676/+subscriptions -- Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~touch-packages Post to : touch-packages@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~touch-packages More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
