Keyboard Not Working

[whittler]

I've just installed Fedora Core 3 onto my PC in a duel boot config.

The first time I booted into it, it promted me to press any key to get kudzu to start detecting my hardware. I pressed keys but it did not register and kudzu did not proceed. It then took me to a log-in prompt. Of course I could not log in, because the keyboard was not being picked up by Linux.

It has been an exetremely long road to get this far, so if anyone can help me over this last installation hurdle, I will be very grateful.

[whittler]

This had now resolved itself, but I am still left a bit baffled.

GRUB gives me the following three options:

Fedora Core 3 (2.6.9-1.667 smp)
Fedora Core 3-up (2.6.9-1.667)
Windows XP

If I go into the first one, I get the keyboard issue.

If I go into the second one, it goes straight through to the login (not showing the page which offers to run Kudzu if I hit a key within 30 seconds), the keyboard works and away I go.

I guess it's a moot point, but I'd love to know what the difference between the two Fedora options are, and why Fedora Core 3-up (2.6.9-1.667) is the only accessible one by my keyboard.

[davec]

The key difference is the 'smp'

SMP stands for symmetric multi-processing, and is the multiple processor version of the kernel. It's also the version of the kernel that runs hyperthreaded Intel processors the fastest. So if the install program detected an smp capable chip in your computer, you probably want to use an smp capable kernel.

I'm having the same problem at the moment with some Dell boxes with Xeons. Although, I've even upgraded to 2.6.10 kernels. I think if there was some way to run kudzu for the smp kernel from a session with the non-smp kernel loaded that would set things up correctly. But I'm not sure how to do that.

Did you manage to resolve this?

Dave

[eerok]

I think you'd be better off running kudzu on the installation medium and using that information to build a custom kernel.

I have a xeon with 2GB ram with an atixxp chipset, and the only joy I get is when I make my own kernel.

[davec]

Hi eerok

Thanks for the info. Could you elaborate a little bit more?

I assume kudzu ran during the install, but then for whatever reason, didn't create the correct configs for smp. Would I need to do something to run it explicitly? When run during install, does it save the info somewhere, so that I could retrieve it after install to build a custom kernel?

[eerok]

Well, kudzu is handy for some things, like choosing drivers for the hardware it probes, but smp is purely a matter of kernel config. For detecting your hardware, the kernel itself is pretty good at reporting what it knows:

# dmesg | grep CPUs
checking TSC synchronization across 2 CPUs: passed.
Brought up 2 CPUs

You can check if highmem is working, too:

# dmesg | grep highmem
Memory: 2074136k/2096384k available (2643k kernel code, 21432k reserved, 934k data, 208k init, 1178880k highmem)

Or to read the whole deal on how the kernel sees your hardware:

dmesg | less

Much of this information is important when you configure a kernel. Kudzu is helpful insofar as it helps detect your hardware and load the correct kernel modules, which you can see by doing

# lsmod

All this information is also valuable in deciding how well a distro kernel image is working for you. I think you need to find a kernel image that at least comes close to dealing with your hardware. Then you can have something that basically works while you experiment with rolling your own

[davec]

I forgot about the wonders of dmesg, thanks for the reminder.

It turned out that turning off "USB Emulation" in the BIOS fixed the problem. It was the closest thing I could find to USB Legacy Support, which was the solution suggested here:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/beta/show_bug.cgi?id=132504

I hope that helps any future people who find this thread,
Dave