Installed but no keyboard

[matthewinaustin]

Greetings and salutations ...

I originially posted this over in hardware ... BUT ... it might make more sense here, so please pardon my blundering around while i get the lay of the land.

First - my system:

FC 4 x86 64bit (installed from CD)
Motherboard: Tyan Thunder K8SE
Processor: Dual AMD Operton dual cores
Memory: 8gb
Video: Onboard
keyboard: plain PS2 style old dell keyboard in good shape
mouse: old microsoft mouse in good shape

Problems:
1. Network was not configured by install
2. Keyboard goes dead when you log into kDE or GNOME

Steps:
1. Install appears to go fine
2. From the login screen ... i can <ctrl>+<alt>+<f1> to a terminal, and terminal works fine (once i login to GNOME or KDE this doesn't work anymore)
3. I can login to FAILSAFE TERMINAL and type fine
4. I can log into KDE or GNOME using the keyboard
5. Once in GNOME or KDE, keyboard is dead. mouse continues to be fine.
6. If I logout from GNOME, the keyboard stays dead until i reboot
7. Unplugging and replugging the keyboard is no good ... must restart.

I have tried 4 different keyboards, including PS2 and USB connections. All confirmed good by other machines.

You guessed it ... i am noob ... making my way into a MS free world.

[bob]

First off, I'm certainly no expert but let's see if some things can help:
Try running:
gconftool-2 -R /desktop/gnome/peripherals/keyboard/kbd
I've got a X86_64 system, although not the same mobo - also an old ps2 keyboard - and mine returns:

layouts = [us]
model = pc105
overrideSettings = false
options = []

Might help if we can analyze any differences. Edit: to check out options, type 'man kbd'

Also, check out this: http://www.fedorafaq.org/#otherinstall
You could give that i8042.nomux a try - I think you can use that during boot if you modify your boot menu. Try hitting any key (except enter) when you get the Grub boot prompt, then 'e' for edit and tack that onto the end of your kernel line (I'd also remove the 'rhgb quiet' at the same time so you can see what's really happening). Then type 'b' for boot. Hopefully it will change that one boot sequence and it won't hold into the next boot so you can't mess anything up if a reboot is necessary.

[matthewinaustin]

Bob ...

First and foremost ... thanks for the help!

results of "gconftool-2 -R /desktop/gnome/peripherals/keyboard/kbd"

layouts = [us]
model = pc105
overrideSettings = true
options = []

I read the "man kbd" but there wasn't anything specific to overrideSettings ... so I now have a couple of new questions:

1. Can i edite the kbd file directly ... or
2. Does this get edited in /etc/X11/xorg.conf ... or
3. Someplace else that i am completely unaware of?

(i assume xorg.conf ... because it would make sense that the shells derive their settings from a single point ... but history would indicate that i could be entirely wong on this (and many other) point. )

Matthew

[bob]

Matthew, I'm flying blind on this too - never had keyboard problems - but if you read the /etc/X11/xorg.conf text, under Section "Input Device" I believe you're in the right area. Here's mine:

Identifier "Keyboard0"
Driver "kbd"
Option "XkbModel" "pc105"
Option "XkbLayout" "us"

Man kbd also talks about this section, but has different terms, which make things a bit muddy here.

One thing for sure, I'd back up my xorg.conf as maybe xorg1.conf so you can return to it if your modifications completely screw up the system. Anyway, let me play around a bit more and see if I can find intelligent thought from elsewhere.

[bob]

Digging myself into a hole here: Found this: /home/bob/.gconf/desktop/gnome/peripherals/keyboard/kbd/%gconf.xml
which can be modified with 'vi' (vim - type 'vimtutor' for details on how to use it) and which contains this line:
<entry name="overrideSettings" mtime="1137256863" type="bool" value="false"

Of course, I don't know if this is generated elsewhere or where we'd change the value to 'false' and even if we did, is that the real solution? Searching through the Forum and googling gave me nada (short for 'nada damnthing').
By the way, are you using the same kind of keyboard that you originally installed FC4 with? What I'm thinking there is if you originally had used a USB keyboard and now are using a PS-2, it might be worth the time to try a re-install and see if that works with the PS-2 from the start.

Finally, I'm not at all familiar with that motherboard you've got there. Have you checked the BIOS settings to see if anything is unusual there? There are others in the Forum who have it up and running though (search 'tyan'. Might shoot them a PM if no luck on the reinstall and see what they've done.

[tashirosgt]

I've encountered systems that would not recognize a ps/2 keyboard even though they did during the install of FC3. I just put a usb keyboard on them. Another shot in the dark is to go into the motherboard BIOS setup and change the settings of things that look like "legacy usb support" or "usb keyboard". Are you saying you can type in the login screen, but once you login the keyboard stops working?

[matthewinaustin]

PROBLEM SOLVED!!!!

FIRST - I resolved my network issue. "/sbin/dhclient eth2" fired up my ether card ...

SECOND - "yum update" downloaded 580M of updates.

Once the update was complete ... the keyboard worked fine. Who knew?

Thanks for the help!

[bob]

Okay, next we're going to rip all the wiring out of your house and change your brand of pet food..... LOL - Excellent! Glad you're all set without going into crisis mode. Enjoy it - you've earned it!

[Instdude]

Hats off to you guys!!
I too am somewhat a noob and even though I didn't have this same issue I freguently read these posts to keep up with tips from the experts.
This is the greatest community of all. The effort that people like you put into making everyone feel at home is wonderful.

[kokocamp]

Originally Posted by matthewinaustin

PROBLEM SOLVED!!!!

FIRST - I resolved my network issue. "/sbin/dhclient eth2" fired up my ether card ...

SECOND - "yum update" downloaded 580M of updates.

Once the update was complete ... the keyboard worked fine. Who knew?

Thanks for the help!

What is related think between keyboard and ethernet card? This is so unbelieveble

Giving a "yum update" command displayed a message "Cannot find a valid baseurl for repo: updates-released". What was supposed to mean?

Anyway, what is exactly the problem caused by? Is it from the kernel or the X?

However, i'm having these problem too. Is it solved by updating the kernel? I am using a standard 2.6.11 kernel and would like to update it to 2.6.17.

[tashirosgt]

Perhaps the connection between the keyboard and the ethernet card was that matthewinaustin had to get his network card working before he could do updates. How were you connected to the internet when you tried yum? The updates update more than the kernel so we don't know what fixed the problem.

[kokocamp]

Originally Posted by tashirosgt

Perhaps the connection between the keyboard and the ethernet card was that matthewinaustin had to get his network card working before he could do updates. How were you connected to the internet when you tried yum? The updates update more than the kernel so we don't know what fixed the problem.

Well, i'm stay at my office which have 24/7 internet connection. What is the error message mean?

[tashirosgt]

I think the error means your yum configuration is not correct and yum cannot connect to the repository it has been told to use. The configuration is done by /etc/yum.conf and the repositories listed by the files in /etc/yum,repos.d. At the moment I'm not sitting at a Fedora machine, so I can't check the details. Different versions of Fedora have different versions of yum and the configuration details (and the repositories they use) are distinct. If you use the (search, advanced search) feature of the forum and search for yum.repos.d, you can find some relevant threads.
The most recent that I found was http://fedoraforum.org/forum/showthr...ht=yum.repos.d

[kokocamp]

Thanks for the answer. After I checked the fedora.repo file, the baseurl section is already marked by "#" (by default maybe). I had remove this character and the problem was solved.