kbdrate(8) — Linux manual page

NAME \| SYNOPSIS \| DESCRIPTION \| OPTIONS \| BUGS \| FILES \| COLOPHON

KBDRATE(8)               System Manager's Manual               KBDRATE(8)

NAME top

       kbdrate - reset the keyboard repeat rate and delay time

SYNOPSIS top

       kbdrate [options...]

DESCRIPTION top

       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 top

       -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 top

       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 top

       /etc/rc.local
       /dev/port

COLOPHON top

       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 2025-08-11.  (At that
       time, the date of the most recent commit that was found in the
       repository was 2025-07-01.)  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
       man-pages@man7.org

kbd                            22 June 1994                    KBDRATE(8)