mouse and keyboard are dead on X: Debian testing

jlinkels · 06-22-2011, 03:11 PM

Same thing here, I just installed Wheezy AMD-64 on brand new hardware. Use ATI Radeon driver xserver-xorg-video-radeon.

Keyboard and mouse are non-functional. Can't CTRL-ALT-F1, neither ALT-SYSREQ

I can SSH into the box, can't see anything strange. According to /var/log/Xorg.0.log the config files from /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d are used.
I can find one file with something about a keyboard:10-evdev.conf

Code:

/Section "InputClass"
        Identifier "evdev keyboard catchall"
        MatchIsKeyboard "on"
        MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*"
        Driver "evdev"
EndSection

But it doesn't say a thing to me, either good or bad.
There is no message in Xorg.0.log about a missing or disabled keyboard.

Edit: removing /run was not a good idea, the machine wouldn't boot after that. I thought it was a symlink to /var/run? Anyway, recreated /var/run and ln -s /var/run /run and booting is fine again.

jlinkels

jlinkels · 06-22-2011, 03:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kaz2100

However, xserver-xorg-input-kbd and -mouse DO exist, and corresponding modules DO sit under /usr/lib/xorg/modules.

To my surprise these packages were not installed. However Xorg.0.log did not complain, and worse of all, after installation keyboard and mouse are still dead in X, no log in Xorg.0.log either.

jlinkels

jlinkels · 06-22-2011, 03:49 PM

Small update.

Before I start X, keyboard and mouse are running fine.
After X is started they are both non-functional
After killing kdm the screen remains black and the keyboard is still dead.

The machine doesn't hang, I can access it by SSH, and also the clock on the login
screen is still running.

jlinkels

jlinkels · 06-23-2011, 08:22 AM

I found a workaround by creating /etc/X11/xorg.conf with this contents:

Code:

Section "ServerFlags"
   Option "AutoAddDevices" "false "
EndSection

jlinkels

jlinkels · 06-23-2011, 08:34 PM

And then I ran into the next problem when KDE wouldn't activate compositing with the Radeon driver and installing the fglrx driver invented even more problems.

That was taking me way too much time and I downgraded to Squeeze, which is stable as you can expect from Debian. The only reason I bear with KDE4 is that I can impress my friends using the other platform.

However, there were times when Debian Testing was more stable than the production versions of other distros, not so anymore. At least not when KDE4 came into the picture.

jlinkels

kaz2100 · 06-27-2011, 06:20 PM

Hya,

After update, X does not look like to find correct color depth, in addition to dead mouse/keyboard without xorg.conf.

Other penguins are happy without xorg.conf, so is it specific to ATI???

Happy Penguins!