RHEL3 and Dell USB keyboard/mouse woes
 

Hi all,

I am trying to set up a Precison 670 that has a USB keyboard and mouse. When I ran the installation of the OS everything worked fine. Now when I boot into the login screen the USB keyboard and mouse don't work. I can't get into anything. Any help would be GREATLY appreciated!

Are the USB modules being loaded?

I am having this same problem with an Dell Optiplex GX280 and RHEL4. I did not have any problems with RHEL3.

How can I see if my USB modules are being loaded? I lose my keyboard/mouse right when the GUI loads and it starts probing for new hardware.

Do you have another machine that you can use to ssh into your RHEL4 box with? If you do you can log in and see what modules are loaded with lsmod.

I can't SSH because the network doesn't seem to be setup. I am at a complete loss here...

How about booting single user, or from a live CD? If you can get in single user then check the modules that get loaded at boot and make sure the USB stuff is included. The live CD will confirm your hardware is supported (though the fact that it was working under 3 is a good sign that it is :p )

Woops

Sounds like you are having a similiar problem.

I have installed Red Hat Enterprise 4 WS on a Dell Precision 530 with dual Xeon 2.2 GHz processors and having difficulties when the smp kernel loads.

Not sure this will help, but are you running dual processors? I was having keyboard & mouse problems, but am I using the PS/2 connectors.

1st try this - in the BIOS turn set "USB Emulation" to "OFF".

Below is the description of the problem, I created a case with RH support, but ended up figuring this out before anyone got back to me.

Solved the problem below by setting USB emulation to OFF.

"The installation completed normally, but on the first reboot with the smp kernel attempting to load, I receive the following error: "i8042.c: Can't read CTR while initializing i8042".

After the error, while continuing to load the smp kernel, the Kudzu manager screens appears, but both the PS/2 keyboard and the PS/2 mouse are unresponsive. The Kudzu manager times out after 30 seconds and the OS continues to load. The login screen appears but still the same error of the unresponsive keyboard and mouse. I have to hard power-down the workstation to restart.

After the 2nd restart, I load the single processor kernel, and the system continues with the first time configuration screens, continues to load the OS and all is fine.

I ran up2date and installed all available updates, including the smp kernel 2.6.9-5.0.3.EL. After the updates completed successfullly, I restarted the workstation.

The new smp kernel 2.6.9-5.0.3.EL attempts to load, which I want it to do, but I receive the same error message, "i8042.c: Can't read CTR while initializing i8042", which then renders the keyboard and mouse useless.

The Precision 530 BIOS is at it's most current revision of A11, per the Dell website and has 1 GB of rambus PC800 memory.

I can get the system to boot with the uni-processor kernel, but not the smp kernel."

Hope this helps.

dwdrumrboy

Okay... I am having a VERY similar problem only with newer Dell hardware. I have installed Red Hat Enterprise 5 WS on a Dell OptiPlex 745. The installation completed normally, but on the first reboot the Kudzu manager screens appears, but both the USB keyboard and the USB mouse are unresponsive. The Kudzu manager times out after 30 seconds and the OS continues to load. The login screen appears but still the same error of the unresponsive keyboard and mouse. I have to hard power-down the workstation to restart.

Any help is much appreciated!

Diko