Linux Keyboard Problems - Bizarre
 

Okay. First, let me give some introductory information.

I ripped down my setup tonight so that I could put in the new desk that I purchased. After getting the desk assembled and into place, I carefully pieced back together my setup, taking great care to make sure everything was set up correctly. The relevant parts of the setup are as follows:

1 Dual Athlon box running Red Hat Linux 7.2
1 PowerMac Dual Processor running MacOS X 10.1.5
1 Belkin OmniView SOHO 4 port KVM switch with USB
1 Microsoft Natural Keyboard to KVM switch
1 Logitech Wingman Gaming Mouse, USB, to Dual Athlon
1 Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer, USB, to PowerMac

The boxes are sitting side by side, as can be seen in this picture:

http://www.metastudios.com/images/setup-new.jpg

Note that the monitors zig-zag - I prefer to have Linux on my left and MacOS on my right, though I wanted the boxes the other way around.

Anyway, the keyboard goes in to the KVM. This is the only device that I use the KVM switch for. There is a USB cable coming out of the KVM switch and going to the PowerMac. There is a Belkin KVM cable kit running from the KVM to the Linux box. I only have the PS2 keyboard cable plugged in - the others are just hanging.

The mice are each hooked directly in to their respective computers, as are the monitors.

This setup was working for me before I tore down the setup.

Now, here is the problem:

After booting, <b>the keyboard will not work</b> on my Red Hat box. Will not work period.

Here's the more bizarre part - it works <b>during</b> boot up. I can enter interactive mode, tell things to start, others to not... but after boot, it doesn't work. Period.

It is <b>not</b> the KVM. I have plugged this keyboard <b>and</b> another which I know to be functional directly in to the PS/2 keyboard port on the motherboard. The exact same symptoms exist.

It now seems that by turning off GPM, I have gotten the keyboard to work in console mode. BUT... it will still not work in X! I checked my XF86Config's and they haven't been changed for 4 and 6 months! Even more strange, XFree86.0.log doesn't seem to show anything wrong.

So where are we as of current? The keyboard doesn't work in X but works everywhere else. startx and then kill it? Yep, keyboard works in console. It just stops working in X. Num Lock, Caps Lock, all that shit... doesn't work. Nothing. It's as if the keyboard is being disconnected when X is running.

I am baffled. I don't know what to do. This is pretty much rendering my very main machine useless.

Any ideas? Anyone?

Perhaps your KVM switch fucked up your ps/2 port? Have you tried using a USB keyboard?

Have you tried one of those 'Live' bootable Linux cd's?

Again, I don't think it's my PS2 port - it was working fine before I rebooted, and it works fine in console mode. I'm 99% sure that it's a software problem, I'm just not sure where or why.

When you plug that keyboard in directly, did you reboot the Linux box from zero with the keyboard plugged in? I've known situations involving a KVM where a keyboard was not recognized by the OS unless a keyboard was present and switched to the port of the booting machine at boot time. I think it was an OS/2 machine though.

It wouldn't surprise me at all to find that Xfree dines further up the food chain than TTY mode does.

Maggie - that's definitely a good point, but it's also one that I considered when buying - this KVM emulates the keyboard, so the operating system thinks it's there. This has worked flawlessly for me in the past.

Even if it hadn't though, yes, I was booting it up with that port selected :)

And it still doesn't work with the keyboard plugged directly in to the PS2 port. :\

Like I said, it's something software (I'm nearly certain, though I wasn't last night - it took me hours to figure this out), but... I have no idea what or why.

rant on...

I had a similar problem with a Cybex KVM - the model I owned would not work with a Dell Optiplex Gx110. Every other freaking computer in the world but that one.

So I emailed Cybex support which replied that if it was within a year old they would replace it with one that would work under warranty... of course it was over a year old, but since this was obviously a design flaw I demanded they replace it anyways.

Their response was basically "it's unfortunate that you think this is a design flaw, too bad it's over the warranty period".

Needless to say I won't be buying another Cybex product and now am using a Starview (by StarTech) which works great.

rant off...

maybe that helps, maybe it just helps you believe you aren't too crazy.

My KVM is great. And it's working fine.

The problem is <b>not the KVM</b>. When I remove the KVM, the problem is identical.

Well, I got tired of fucking with it. So I went to Micro Center, bought Red Hat 7.3, came home, pulled out my spare 120GB Deskstar, stuck 'em both in and booted the CD-ROM. It's at the "preparing to install..." stage right now, meaning that I've configured everything and now it's getting ready to copy packages.

I selected a lot of shit, so it's got 2 full gigs to install. On my 117 gig / partition, I don't think it should be such a big deal. So far, it's going well. I wonder how many CDs I have to swap out - there are 3 install discs. I bet I use all three of them.

Anyway, if it works after this, yay. So far the keyboard has been working in X (the install routine), so I'm pretty confident that it will. I really don't think it's a hardware problem. Once I get this going, the first thing that I do is mount my old hard drive and copy over my home directory. Then we have something to build from. :) The applications aren't that important to me - I can reinstall anything I need pretty quickly. It's the user data. That shit's important. It's annoying that all my operating system customizations will need to be redone, but I guess dem's the breaks. I think I'm going to write a script to run after building a new system that will set it all up for me. That's a good idea. :)

Anyway, I'm going to let this install and fuck around on the PowerMac while it completes. You'll hear how it goes.

Hmmm. Worked fine until you tore down the setup, and now doesn't work.

Obvious software problem. :-)

Re: Linux Keyboard Problems - Bizarre
 

I'm sure one of the "Power Macs" cited above is actuially the Linux box?

Have you tried swapping which keyboard port coming out of the KVM goes to which computer?

You're looking at it the wrong way:

"Worked fine until I rebooted" is the correct way to look at it.

Something obviously changed between boots that is making it not work.

At the moment, I'm copying my home directory. Since it's some 30 gigs, this will take a while. But once that's done, I plan on starting up X and seeing what's up. I'm guessing it'll work just fine. If not, then I've got a problem. Probably motherboard.

However, I'm entirely skeptical that hardware could be the problem. We'll see.

Re: Re: Linux Keyboard Problems - Bizarre
 

Yes, PS2 keyboard goes to Linux box - I will edit to reflect. I was wayyyyy tired last night.

And yes, I've tried swapping ports - this is a 4 port KVM, and I tried them all. Plus hooking it straight up to the PS2 port.

bottom line ...

Linux doesn't run on the new desktop. :)

But until you actually know what's wrong, you don't know what "the right way to look at it" is.. Thinking that you do can be a *huge* obstacle to successful diagnosis.

Oh cmon. When I worked in Unix tech support the most important question was: what's changed? That's diagnosis.