[USB] Keyboard, mouse and ergonomy

[Peter Jeremy]

On 2010-Sep-27 15:34:19 +0200, Alexander Leidinger <Alexander at Leidinger.net> wrote:
>Quoting Hans Petter Selasky <hselasky at c2i.net> (from Mon, 27 Sep 2010  
>14:21:42 +0200):
>> I was thinking about adding a sysctl to ukbd and ums that shows how many
>> keypresses have been done and how many pixels you have moved the mouse during
>> a day.

I agree with Alexander's comments on the usefulness or otherwise
of just counting keypresses and mouse pixels.  Mouse clicks or
number of mouse movements is probably more useful for ergonomics
than pixels moved.

>Regarding the security:
>  - don't make this real-time stats, add some artificial delay

Delaying the reporting of actual keystroke numbers by several seconds
is rather painful.  If you want to go this path, either just update
the visible count every N seconds (have a callout that triggers every
N seconds) or M events (where N or M are configurable and maybe small
random numbers).

>  - make it depending on a compile time knob (disabled
>    by default) and issue a warning on device attach if
>    compiled in

My personal view is that this is being excessively paranoid.  Note
that FreeBSD already reports the total number characters read/written
via TTY devices.  I don't think it's necessary to go as far as
compiled-out by default with warnings if enabled - a runtime knob is
adequate.  Having the sysctl disabled by default and only enabled by
root (maybe only readable by root) should be adequate since there are
plenty of other mechanisms for root to obtain actual keypress and
mouse movement data.

-- 
Peter Jeremy
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