Installing linux without PS/2 keyboard or mouse

jrcarroll · 08-16-2003, 08:41 PM

Hi!

I've currently been trying to install Slackware 8.0 and RH 7.3 and can't get started. I currently can only use a usb keyboard and mouse because my ps/2 ports are fried. Does anyone know how to do this. When I first boot with the cd and get to root I can't type anything becasue neither distros look for usb devices. Any help would be great.

I have RH 9 in the mail so I figure that should work.

Thanks,

Justin

MacKtheHacK · 08-18-2003, 12:44 PM

I think you're SOL here. Most kernel's assume that the system BIOS will correctly find the keyboard. If they have USB support compiled into them, they might find the mouse, but I'm not optomistic about the keyboard. I don't know if RH9 addresses this problem or not.

What I would do is pull the hard drive out, plop it into a box with working PS/2 ports, install Linux on that, be sure the USB stuff is working, and then put the disk back into the original box. Of course, that assumes you have another system handy...

michaelk · 08-18-2003, 01:11 PM

Some motherboard BIOS's have the option for using USB keyboards on boot.

There is a slim chance that yours might. If not then as the previous post said your probably SOL.

jrcarroll · 08-18-2003, 11:51 PM

Cool thanks, I probably could get access to another box, my keyboard and all that work perfectly fine in knoppix, but only when I boot normally with it, I can't even switch windows managers without losing support. I'll give it a try and see what I can do.