Keyboard issues during installation on HP Ultrabook
 

So I'm having an interesting problem on my HP Split x2 ultrabook.

I boot the installation medium for 14.1 in UEFI mode and it brings up the bootloader no problem. After I tell it to boot the standard Huge.S kernel, everything goes fine. Once it gets to the part where it asks what keymap I would like to use, my keyboard function goes to crap. I hit a key and it gives me some random letter or sequence of symbols. I can't get past this point due to this problem.

It doesn't have this problem at the boot loader. I guess I'm mostly wondering if there are options I can pass to the kernel from the bootloader to allow me to rectify this problem. I've never experienced an issue like this before.

Thanks.

Step 1: Try to not "choose" a keyboard layout. Let the machine pick it (unless your really using a non-standard keyboard) if it give you the option to cancel, do that.
Setp 2: Refer to the manufacturers documentation for your laptop. If the laptop requires a particular code page for the keyboard, there will likely be copious documentation as to which one it requires.
Step 3: Plug in a standard, external keyboard that you know works and repeat steps one and two.

You'll probably find step one fixes the problem, the only time I've ever had a problem is when I went looking for a chinese keyboard in the list...

It won't give me the option to cancel or just select the standard. When I type enter, it thinks I'm typing an "A". It quite literally scrambles my keyboard and removes all possibility of changing it or even accepting it as is. I can go no further in the installation.

The laptop doesn't require any alternative keymapping. Arch works fine with a standard keymapping on this system, as do several other distros. I just can't figure out why it's only Slackware. I never thought about plugging in a keyboard. I'll give that a try and report back I suppose. Either way, I still have to resolve the problem if I'm going to run Slack on here.

Hey ramkatral,

Hmmmm. That's not the standard behavior of the slackware installer. It gives you an option to set keyboard map if you press 1 on the selection menu but it doesn't put you in a keyboard selection menu unless it's having some kind of issue with keymapping your hardware (as far as I know).
Did you try the plug in keyboard?

I looked at the specs on your laptop (and just let me interject, I am consumed with jealousy at the moment ) and I noticed you have a touch screen option. Cool, but it may be involved with the issue the installer is having.
Can you disable it in the bios long enough to slack the box and then we can re-enable it on the backside and clean it up there?

I have the same machine and am seeing the exact same issue. I am also interested in finding the solution.

As an aside, were you able to get the wireless card working in any of the other distros you tried? I've had no luck there either.

OK, it's a tablet.
I but it doesn't have a tablets hardware configuration:
What happens when you try to install without the keyboard attached?
The Linux kernel supports touchscreen, the huge smp has the drivers, what kind of result do you get with that?

Did you ever find a solution for this?

Well, it appears the OP has abandoned his thread but for those who may run into the same issue, as I did, I did find a workaround for it. It seems the issue is the 14.1 installer.

I tried an install using the 14 image and it worked great, except that older kernel didn't work for the wireless card, as I expected. I then used the 14.1 image to upgrade the system to 14.1 following the instructions in UPGRADE.TXT.

I have now a fully functioning Slackware64 14.1 system running on the HP Split X2 Ultrabook and, with the aid of WICD and downloading the correct firmware for the card, I have full use of wireless as well.

I hope this pain in the neck sort of workaround helps someone else trying to get 14.1 install on the same machine.

I ran into this problem as well with my Dell Latitude e7440 and Slackware64 14.1.

In pure UEFI mode, with a hybrid (GPT/MBR) bootable USB thumb drive, I am able to get as far as selecting the keymap. I cannot select a keymap with the built-in keyboard.

Using dmesg, I see the keyboard as:
Work-around #1: By plugging in an external USB keyboard, I am able to proceed normally. Once the install is complete, and I reboot, the built-in keyboard works as expected.

Work-around #2: I enabled CSM (legacy ROM support) in the BIOS setup. Then, I wrote the Slackware64 14.1 disc image to an MBR-only USB thumb drive. The built-in keyboard works fine.

With a properly working built-in keyboard, dmesg shows

The caveat to work-around #2 is that the Slackware install will not detect a UEFI system, so it won't offer to install eLILO for you.

To get around this, I allowed the installer to create a bootable thumb drive to boot into the new install. Then, I was able to manually install eLILO. I rebooted into BIOS setup, disabled CSM, and was finally able to boot into pure UEFI Slack64.

I just came across this old bug. Comment #19 looks like it's worth a try.

I'll have to try booting the Slack64 14.1 install disc in pure UEFI with the following:
I'll report back later.

Update: I tried the option above, but it didn't work.

Hi,

I am having the same problem installing slackware64 14.1 on a dell latitude e7420. I am booting from a usb and if I select to boot as a UEFI device I have this problem but if I boot in "legacy boot" it is OK and I can complete installation.

I am having the same issue as mentioned before, it is fine to select a kernel at the boot prompt, hit enter and it continues, but when I come to the part with the keyboard selection it halts and I can't enter anything i.e. no response from my sub keyboard (standard qwerty layout).
This is on a PC

MASONM had some luck with this...

If it doesn't work, post the model and manufacturer of the PC and we'll have another go at this.

Thanks for your reply

I got a USB (just read back and saw i wrote sub :( ) keyboard on it, will try a PS2 key board and let you guys know

As promised, put a PS2 keyboard on it and solved the problem.

Got the same issue with different distributions :( looks like USB is not recognized at initial start up/boot