[CLUE-Tech] HELP! Keyboard Freezing

[Jed S. Baer]

On Sun, 1 Jun 2003 11:11:59 -0700
Jonathan Anscher <janscher at ups.edu> wrote:

> i just recently moved to linux and enountered a major problem. the
> keyboard froze after a few minutes of working with it. i have read
> several reports of similar things happening, hoqwever, have heard no
> definative answer to it. Upon shutting the computer down and
> restarting it, keyboard function returns, however, i lose it fairly
> quickly.

What runlevel are you booting to? (that is, do you have a graphical logon,
or command-line logon prompt?)

If you're booting to runlevel 5 (graphical logon), change your init
setting to boot to runlevel 3, and see if the keyboard still freezes after
the same amount of time.

To change your runlevel, edit /etc/inittab -- find this section:

# Default runlevel. The runlevels used by RHS are:
#   0 - halt (Do NOT set initdefault to this)
#   1 - Single user mode
#   2 - Multiuser, without NFS (The same as 3, if you do not have
#   networking) 3 - Full multiuser mode
#   4 - unused
#   5 - X11
#   6 - reboot (Do NOT set initdefault to this)
# 
id:3:initdefault:

The line above (from my machine) shows runlevel 3 selected.

The reason for booting to runlevel 3 instead of 5 is to eliminate
something related to running X11.

> we thought it might be an overheating program, perhaps cause
> by a failure of the fan to operate properly under linux, but it did
> not seem overheated at all.

I'd be quite surprised at a RH install that, by default anyway, would tell
the bios to turn the fan off at startup. However, laptop power management
functions can sometimes be tricky under Linux -- or so I've heard. I'd
make certain that all apm or other power-management utilites are turned
off for testing purposes, although I can't think of any reason why an
errant suspend state, or something like that, would cause the keyboard to
be ignored.

> Another website suggested installing GPM,
> some mouse software, but the installation requires libtinfo.so.5 which
> is extremely rare and i have not been able to find. what can i do?

Adding more software won't help you debug the problem, as it just adds
more possibilities. GPM shouldn't affect the keyboard anyway, as it's a
console mouse utility. FWIW, I have GPM running on my RH8.0 box, without
libtinfo. You might check here:

http://speakeasy.rpmfind.net//linux/RPM/redhat/9/i386/gpm-1.19.3-27.i386.html

where there's no mention of libtinfo in the requisites. I'm quite
surprised that a RH install didn't include GPM.

> Distribution and version: RedHat 9
> Kernel: 2.4.20-13.9
> Hardware: Dell Inspiron 5000e, 700Mhz, 512 SDRAM
> keyboard: laptop keyboard, no docking station

Is there an auxiliary keyboard port? If so, what happens if you plug a
keyboard into that?

This actually sounds to me like a hardware problem, although it could also
be an problem with some other device stomping on the keyboard interrupt
(well, that's sort of a hardware problem too, I guess -- except that with
PNP, I think the driver can tell a device which IRQ to use?).

I'm inferring that you've had this laptop for a while, and have
successfully used it with some other OS prior to installing Linux, but it
would be nice to hear you confirm that.

jed
-- 
I wouldn't even think about bribing a rottweiler with a steak that
didn't weigh more than I do. -- Jason Earl