Corsair Strafe RGB

The Corsair Strafe RGB is a mechanical gaming keyboard that is possible of operating cross platforms as a simple USB device. There is ongoing, open source development effort on GitHub (see the link the infobox to the right) to support the advanced features of the keyboard with a system daemon.

Hardware
The device shows up in with an ID of.

Kernel
The daemon (installed in the step below) requires user level driver support in order to operate properly. Enable this option in the kernel:

Emerge
A daemon is required in order to send configuration instructions and firmware updates to the keyboard.

Services
In order to configure the keyboard, and display the beautiful color effects, a daemon must be running.

OpenRC
Set the ckb-daemon to start on system boot:

To start the service now:

systemd
For systemd, ensure the ckb.service file will be loaded on system boot:

Start the service now via:

Usage
One the daemon is running and the kernel has been configured, start the ckb client program. The icon should now show up in most GUI toolbars. It is also possible to start program from the command-line with:

Once the client has been started it will live in the system tray. Be sure to check the "Start ckb at login" checkbox which can be found in the tab. This will start the client with each system boot.

System boots slowly, hangs on USB device
It is a known issue that the Strafe can cause the system to boot slowly. Generally this is the kernel hanging during USB initialization. Passing  to the kernel command line is work around for this issue.

For GRUB2, simply:

Then be sure to regenerate GRUB2's configuration file:

Other bootloaders can be handled accordingly.

Keyboard stops working after a key press
dmesg output looks like the following:

The solution is not known yet...

External resources

 * Corsair's official Strafe release video (YouTube)