keyboard fails in kdm
 

debian 2.6.10
3dfx voodoo5

System was running fine, I had run synaptic and chose to upgrade the 'pakages' it suggested. One of the upgrades asked me several questions that I, newb that I am, had no idea what the correct answers were. I chose whatever the default/suggested answer was and hoped for the best. For the record, I don't know whether this, or any other of the upgraded 'pakages' had anything to do with the keyboard.
A day or two later, I rebooted and my keyboard no longer works after kdm is started. I can logon to my BIOS password, I can use it during boot(ie. F2), but once kdm is started my keybord no longer responds at all. I can reboot into terminal mode and my keyboard works fine. I also swapped keyboards to confirm it wasn't hardware.
I have gone into control center, and confirmed that the keyboard is still set to the US-english setting, with the correct setup for my keyboard - generic-104 key. I also turned on numlock-at-boot, and now when I reboot numlock is on.
Since I can boot into terminal, I'm sure I can read some of the log files to maybe narrow things down, but I don't know how to open these files in terminal mode. (I told you I was a newb.)
Oh gurus of debian penguinese, help me!?!

Phats_O

Try this:

nano /etc/kde3/kdm/Xservers
Add vt7 to the end of this line:
:0 local@tty1 /usr/X11R6/bin/X -nolisten tcp vt7

nano /etc/kde3/kdm/kdmrc
Add ServerVTs=-7 to the General section:
[General]
ConfigVersion=2.1
PidFile=/var/run/kdm.pid
Xservers=/etc/kde3/kdm/Xservers
ServerVTs=-7

That Did It! Thanks!
 

That took care of it.
Thank you very much for your help.
I wouldn't mind, if you felt like explaining, knowing a bit more about what the problem was, and how it may have broken in the first place.
Phats_O

A google would explain it a lot better than me. Basically it's a problem with certain versions of kdm when getty steals the keyboard to vt2 when X is at vt7. vt meaning virtual terminal, so the keyboard probably functioned in Ctrl-Alt-F2. Like I said, a google will give a better explanation.