Module console 

Muting the kernel’s virtual terminal.

A Denise application that owns the display still shares the keyboard with whatever is behind it. On a console-booted kiosk that is a login shell, so every character typed into a Denise text field is also typed at the shell — and reboot<Enter> in a form field does what it says. Holding DRM master stops the console drawing; it does nothing about the keyboard.

Console::mute_keyboard sets KDSKBMODE to K_OFF, which makes the kernel discard console keystrokes entirely. Reading /dev/input/event* is unaffected, because evdev sits below the console layer — which is the whole trick.

Getting your console back

K_OFF is process-independent kernel state on a shared device. It is restored on Drop, including while a panic unwinds, but nothing runs on SIGKILL or a hard reset, and a muted console has no working Ctrl+Alt+F2 to escape through — K_OFF swallows that too.

So write down the escape hatch before you need it. From SSH, or from another VT if you can still reach one:

kbd_mode -u -C /dev/tty1     # back to Unicode

Do not mute during development on a machine you cannot reach over the network.

Structs

Console

A handle to the virtual terminal, which restores whatever it changed on drop.

Enums

ConsoleError

Something went wrong talking to the console.

Constants

KD_GRAPHICS

KD_GRAPHICS: the console stops drawing text and stops blanking the screen.

KD_TEXT

KD_TEXT: the console draws text. The default.

K_MEDIUMRAW

K_MEDIUMRAW: keycodes rather than scancodes, still untranslated.

K_OFF

K_OFF: the kernel reads the keyboard and throws the result away.

K_RAW

K_RAW: the console delivers raw scancodes.

K_UNICODE

K_UNICODE: translated and UTF-8 encoded. Where a modern console sits.

K_XLATE

K_XLATE: scancodes translated to bytes through the loaded keymap.