I have RH Linux 9 running on a Dell Dimension 5000 with a USB Keyb and mouse. The RH kernel is 2.4.20-8. It works happily away with all hardware detected and working.

I want to install kernel 2.4.28. So I download the kernel, can go through the motions of the config, build etc and reboot - but my USB Keyboard and mouse no longer work after boot. My only option is to switch off the machine (power switch) and then boot to the older kernel.

I've built that kernel (2.4.28) on a couple of other machines and it has alwars worked fine. I double checked that the USB HID support was enabled in the kernel config.

Any suggestions?

Tom.

2.4.30 is out.
Perhaps modules (if you compiled as modules) aren't loaded.

Thanks for the reply. OK - more information required.

Kernel 2.4.28: I want to use this kernel as I've got a couple of machines all running 2.4.28. I wanna keep my distros across machines as even as possible. So for now - I'm not gonna consider moving kernel unless I have to.

Kernel build: In 'make menuconfig' I have nearly all the USB options selected. Two omissions would be USB Keyb/Mouse HIDBP Support (I've tried including these and rebuilding - made no difference).

Things I've noticed: The only kernel specific reference to modules etc. I can see is in '/etc/sysconfig/hwconf.' The 'ehci-hcd'device has a reference to the stock RH kernel. I don't know if that makes any difference. And that's my problem - I don't know enough about the linux boot process, how it's deciding what modules to load, etc., etc. I'm not sure where the hwconf file fits into the picture.

Modules etc.:
One thing I would like to do is boot the machine to 2.4.28 and see what modules are loaded. But without the keyb and mouse I can't do that on the local terminal. I can't set up the network card to telnet into the machine because the keyb and mouse aren't working. So am a little stuck.

If you've any more pointers, for a resource maybe so I can read about the hardware setup in the boot process, or of course the magic 'add a 0 to this file, and your problems will go away!!!' I'd appreciate it.

For what it's worth I googled for RH9 and USB keyboard/mouse but didn't spot much of value from the tons of hits after about an hour.

Tom.

You can setup telnet/ssh with the old kernel, then boot the new and see the modules, and manually load them.
Is there any rc.local or rc.modules you can look at?
Sry, no magic 0 add .

OK - thanks for all the help... This was what happened:

The stock RH9 kernel had USB suport enabled as a Module. When I built 2.4.28 I mistakenly compiled the USB support directly into the kernel.

In the /etc/rc.sysinit script, part of the RH9 distro, there's some code to see if /proc/devices has a device called 'usb' listed. If there isn't then the script goes ahead and loads all the required modules. If there is already then the script steps over that step. Because I had built the USB support directly into the kernel it was skipping over this step. So the two modules for ehci-hcd and usb-ehci never loaded.

I'm not really sure WHY compiling th USB support directly into the kernel made such a difference (built in - loaded on boot - what's the difference?). I'm sure I should have been able to get the modules to load myself if I knew more about the rc.sysinit process etc....

I changed the 2.4.28 kernel config to load the USB support as a module and hey presto - I was back in business.

Ta for the steer on the telnet/SSH - must have been lacking caffeine or something today and friday - took me a while to sort this one out.

Thanks again,
Tom.