Bug 60915 – Keyboard unresponsive after booting LiveCD 2004.2

• Product: Gentoo Release Media
• Status: VERIFIED NEEDINFO

[Description [e-mail] 2004-08-19 11:21:59 UTC]

I have a PS/2 keyboard connected to a Belkin 4 port SOHO KVM, which is connected to my G5 via USB - this arrangment works perfectly with OS X, however when I boot from the latest LiveCD, the keyboard works at the boot prompt (where you typically select a kernel to boot, but is unresponsive when the root prompt eventually comes up.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Hold down Opt+Cmd+O+F during boot to enter open firmware and enter password
2. select CDROM
3. boot LiveCD with default image (i.e. pressing enter at the boot: prompt)
4. once system is up, typing at the root prompt produces no output.
Actual Results:  
system did not respond to keyboard input - I had to hard reset.

Expected Results:  
accepted keyboard input in the normal way, allowing me to proceed with an install of gentoo.

I will try and dig my original Apple USB keyboard out of the loft later on and see if I can reproduce the 
bug with a keyboard directly connected to my G5.

system details:

dual G5 @2GHz, PS/2 microsoft natural keyboard, belkin 4 port SOHO KVM with the G5 connected on 
the third port.  Switching to another port and back did not clear the problem.

I guess this bug could technically be classed as a blocker since I can't currently install gentoo, but since 
not everyone is going to experience it, I'll put it as major for now.

[Comment 1 Tom Gall (RETIRED) 2004-08-19 21:32:28 UTC]

interesting issue.

Where there any messages from the USB layer complaining about it not being able to talk to the keyboard?

[Comment 2 [e-mail] 2004-08-28 11:42:45 UTC]

OK, I went to try and reproduce this, but interestingly, I can't actually get into open firmware (by pressing opt+cmd+o+f) or select a custom boot volume (by pressing opt) using the PS/2 keyboard connected through the KVM anymore - this _used_ to work.  Despite this fact, the PS/2 and KVM combination work fine the rest of the time when the system is booted into OS X.  I reset nvram in the course of removing the open firmware passward, but this did not help.

I managed to boot from the liveCD by plugging in the supplied Apple USB keyboard into the front USB port in order to select a custom boot volume, then removed the keyboard while waiting at the boot: prompt.

Again the PS/2 keyboard was unresponsive when bootup had completed, but if I plugged the USB keyboard back in again, I could type commands OK.  I checked dmesg and couldn't see an obvious error messages, but I'm concious I should be looking the absence of an initialisation message rather than an error message per se??  I'm afraid I'm not familiar with PPC linux, or USB with Linux for that matter  (my 6+ years of experience is PC based without USB) - so I'm not completely sure what I should be looking for here.  If you can tell me which device to use to mount a USB flash card reader, then I can transfer dmesg here if that would help.

[Comment 3 Philippe Trottier (RETIRED) 2004-09-06 11:36:22 UTC]

One good question is, did it work with any other Linux distro or gentoo-ppc, if so then a copy of the .config would really help. If it never worked with any other linux, then there is probably no drivers, or the USB serial number and company number aren't registered... so if you can check the USB information from OSX in system profiler, it would also help ...

[Comment 4 Tom Gall (RETIRED) 2004-10-31 07:52:32 UTC]

Is there any status update on this, especially with the 2004.3 livecds as well as using the suggestions in the comments of this bug?

[Comment 5 Tom Gall (RETIRED) 2004-11-10 19:44:26 UTC]

given the lack of status updates from the reporter, closing this bug.

[Comment 6 [e-mail] 2004-11-14 00:07:49 UTC]

confirmed fixed with 2004.3 livecd.