Keyboard disabled at log in prompt for anything but single user mode

[xellos]

We installed Fedora Core on a Pentium M w/ integrated graphics and a PS/2 mouse and a PS/2 keyboard. The installation went fine and we installed the "Everything" package option. The system rebooted, we chose the monitor and set the resolution. Clicked the next button, the screen went blank and the computer hung.

Rebooted the computer. Fedora started loading, all services started with "OKs". Graphical interface came up and continued to load services. After the HAL daemon was loaded, the screen went blank and the system hung. At this point the keyboard and mouse were disabled. From other posts, we suspected a problem with XWindows and the video card.

Rebooted the computer and deleted the "rgdb" parameter in the GRUB bootloader. Fedora started loading, all services started with "OKs" and the log in prompt came up. However, the keyboard (and I presume the mouse) are disabled. You can't type, turn on NumLock or CapsLock. Only solution was to flip the power switch and reboot. Experimentation showed that the keyboard responded until right before the log in prompt came up.

Rebooted the computer and added the "single" parameter in the GRUB bootloader. This time, when the prompt came up, the keyboard worked just fine. Unfortunatley, we need it to work in multi-user mode for the intended application.

Is there a configuration option that diables the keyboard/mouse in the multi-user mode that might be wrong? Does anyone have an idea on what we could try?

By the way, all USB is disabled in the BIOS.

[xellos]

This appears to be the same issue that other users have had (Fedora Core 3 hangs after HAL daemon is started). We have the correct graphics card driver. The graphics card is a Silicon Motion SM722 with 8 MB of video memory. The graphics driver being used is the generic silicon motion driver.

We can boot the system into single user mode, but not into multi-user mode (run level 3). When we try to boot the system into run level 3, the cursor freezes at the long in prompt and we can't type the user name and password.

Does anyone have a possible solution to this? Or another video driver to recommend?

[AndyGreen]

Could kudzu be probing in an indelicate manner?

chkconfig kudzu off

and reboot.

[xellos]

Turning off kudzu did not help. However, this led me to try

chkconfig haldaemon off

and reboot. This time, Fedora got to the graphical login prompt and I was able to log in. Everything seems to be working normally.

I tried turning the hal daemon back on by typing

service haldaemon start

but that caused my system to immediately freeze and I had to reboot to recover.

The hal daemon installed is hal-0.4.2-1.EL4 .

I also tried to perform a system report by typing

sysreport

but that froze after reporting "Gathering information about your ide drivers: [OK]" and I had to reboot to recover.

What exactly does the HAL daemon do? Is it something I will need in the future? Any ideas how to recover from this?