Hi there boys and girls,

Been having a tricky (but not show-stopping problem) on slack 13.37 (technically, 13.38 and above )

I use a Holtek Wireless USB keyboard + mouse combo device. It works fine with stock kernel 2.6.37 however I noticed that when trying out the 2.6.38 testing kernel the device would not work at all.

I see some difference in dmesg shown here:
Non-working {
[ 8.320014] usb 5-1: new low speed USB device number 2 using uhci_hcd
[ 8.505100] usb 5-1: New USB device found, idVendor=1241, idProduct=f767
[ 8.505105] usb 5-1: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=0
[ 8.505110] usb 5-1: Product: Wireless 2.4GHz Trackball Keyboard
[ 8.505113] usb 5-1: Manufacturer: HOLTEK
}

Working {
[ 7.320013] usb 5-1: new low speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 2
[ 7.505869] usb 5-1: New USB device found, idVendor=1241, idProduct=f767
[ 7.505873] usb 5-1: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=0
[ 7.505877] usb 5-1: Product: Wireless 2.4GHz Trackball Keyboard
[ 7.505881] usb 5-1: Manufacturer: HOLTEK
[ 7.523200] input: HOLTEK Wireless 2.4GHz Trackball Keyboard as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.3/usb5/5-1/5-1:1.0/input/input2
[ 7.523247] generic-usb 0003:1241:F767.0001: input,hidraw0: USB HID v1.10 Keyboard [HOLTEK Wireless 2.4GHz Trackball Keyboard] on usb-0000:00:1d.3-1/input0
[ 7.550353] input: HOLTEK Wireless 2.4GHz Trackball Keyboard as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.3/usb5/5-1/5-1:1.1/input/input3
[ 7.550489] generic-usb 0003:1241:F767.0002: input,hiddev96,hidraw1: USB HID v1.10 Mouse [HOLTEK Wireless 2.4GHz Trackball Keyboard] on usb-0000:00:1d.3-1/input1
}

In addition, the usage count for the evdev module goes down from 10 when it's working fine to 7 when it's not. It looks to me like 3 input devices are instantiated by the kernel when all is well. I've tried with a custom compiled 2.6.39 kernel (using the config from the working 2.6.37 kernel, only tweaking processor type to suit my system) and the problem persists.

Basic USB keyboards work fine.

Could anyone here help me troubleshoot this? Any extra information needed?

did you just upgrade kernel or do make menuconfig

if you upgraded should be same kernel settings, if you compiled manually would need to know if you loaded the kernel module driver for this or if you loaded as a module

run:

lsmod |grep HOLTEK and post back


Rasta420

There's no module for it specifically. The device simply appears as a generic usb hid.

The 2.6.38 kernel was from testing so that was simply an installpkg job to try out. When I compiled my own 2.6.39 I took the config from 2.6.37 (the working one) used 'make menuconfig' to compile specifically for my processor and then continued with the build as usual.

I checked some of the build options (after finding that the new kernel didn't work) to make sure that all the usb hid elements were there. All looks good to my untrained eye.

As you can see from the dmesg output, the device is recognised, just not claimed by the input subsystem

EDIT:
I pulled the 3.0 kernel from my ubuntu system and tried that (Was wondering if the rc.modules script was the issue) which worked fine. So it's definitely gotta be a kernel config issue. Any ideas what changed between 2.6.37 and 2.6.38, maybe the module was split into separate parts?

EDIT:
Cracked it, missing checked CONFIG_EXPERT and subsequently the boot protocol drivers that appear...