esekeyd (multimedia keyboard daemon for Linux)

ESE Key Daemon is a multimedia keyboard daemon for Linux. With
the 2.6 kernel series it can also handle remote controls, as they
are presented as keyboards. It's a userspace program that polls
/dev/input/event? interfaces for incoming keypresses, and executes
commands as defined in its config file.

esekeyd is also useful for keyboards without multimedia keys. Its
functionality is similar to xbindkeys, but (a) it doesn't require X
(works in the console), and (b) it doesn't "eat" the keystrokes it
receives, so you'll want to disable those keycodes in your keymap
if you don't want applications to react to them (see loadkeys(1) and
keymaps(5)).

To start using esekeyd, first edit /etc/esekeyd.conf to define your
keys and the programs that will be run (use "learnkeys" to get
the names of the keys). Then start the esekeyd daemon by running
"/usr/sbin/esekeyd /etc/esekeyd.conf" (as root, or as a user in the
input group). To start esekeyd at boot, just add that command to
/etc/rc.d/rc.local.

If esekeyd never sees your keystrokes, you may have to explicitly set
the input device for it to use on the command line (see the esekeyd(1)
man page). Also, for testing purposes, see the "Simple test" section
at the end of /etc/esekeyd.conf.