USB optical mouse on laptop causes bk12 boot to hang

USB optical mouse on laptop causes bk12 boot to hang

[Robert P. J. Day]

  on to the next issue.  the setup:
	dell inspiron 8100 laptop
	RH 9
	2.5.66-bk12

  for ergonomic reasons, rather than use the laptop keyboard and
touchpad, i have (under the previous RH 8 and 2.4.20) been using
an external PS/2 keyboard and logitech USB optical mouse.  this
setup has been working fine -- when both external input devices
are connected, i can use either keyboard, and just the optical
USB mouse.

  booting under 2.5.66-bk12, if just the keyboard is connected,
no problem.  the boot works, both keyboards are active, and the
touchpad works.

  however, if i connect *only* the optical mouse, the boot gets
to "Freeing unused kernel memory", hangs for about a minute, 
then powers down the box.  not good.  (same thing happens if 
both external keyboard and mouse are connected, so i've isolated
it to just the optical mouse).

  thoughts?

rday

Re: USB optical mouse on laptop causes bk12 boot to hang

[Greg KH]

On Mon, Apr 07, 2003 at 09:23:19AM -0400, Robert P. J. Day wrote:
> 
>   on to the next issue.  the setup:
> 	dell inspiron 8100 laptop
> 	RH 9
> 	2.5.66-bk12
> 
>   for ergonomic reasons, rather than use the laptop keyboard and
> touchpad, i have (under the previous RH 8 and 2.4.20) been using
> an external PS/2 keyboard and logitech USB optical mouse.  this
> setup has been working fine -- when both external input devices
> are connected, i can use either keyboard, and just the optical
> USB mouse.
> 
>   booting under 2.5.66-bk12, if just the keyboard is connected,
> no problem.  the boot works, both keyboards are active, and the
> touchpad works.
> 
>   however, if i connect *only* the optical mouse, the boot gets
> to "Freeing unused kernel memory", hangs for about a minute, 
> then powers down the box.  not good.  (same thing happens if 
> both external keyboard and mouse are connected, so i've isolated
> it to just the optical mouse).

What happens when you plug in the mouse, after the boot process has
completed?

thanks,

greg k-h

Re: USB optical mouse on laptop causes bk12 boot to hang

[Robert P. J. Day]

On Mon, 7 Apr 2003, Greg KH wrote:

> On Mon, Apr 07, 2003 at 09:23:19AM -0400, Robert P. J. Day wrote:
> > 
> >   on to the next issue.  the setup:
> > 	dell inspiron 8100 laptop
> > 	RH 9
> > 	2.5.66-bk12
> > 
> >   for ergonomic reasons, rather than use the laptop keyboard and
> > touchpad, i have (under the previous RH 8 and 2.4.20) been using
> > an external PS/2 keyboard and logitech USB optical mouse.  this
> > setup has been working fine -- when both external input devices
> > are connected, i can use either keyboard, and just the optical
> > USB mouse.
> > 
> >   booting under 2.5.66-bk12, if just the keyboard is connected,
> > no problem.  the boot works, both keyboards are active, and the
> > touchpad works.
> > 
> >   however, if i connect *only* the optical mouse, the boot gets
> > to "Freeing unused kernel memory", hangs for about a minute, 
> > then powers down the box.  not good.  (same thing happens if 
> > both external keyboard and mouse are connected, so i've isolated
> > it to just the optical mouse).
> 
> What happens when you plug in the mouse, after the boot process has
> completed?

ok, here's the result of testing all this with 2.5.67-bk2.  i built
a new kernel and modules, rebooted and:

1) with USB optical mouse and PS/2 keyboard:
	system hangs after "Freeing unused kernel memory"

2) with USB optical mouse only:
	same problem as 1)

3) with PS/2 keyboard only:
	boots fine, both keyboards work, and onboard touchpad works

so having the mouse plugged into the USB port seems to be the issue.

  and checking further, i find that i've apparently no USB support
loaded whatsoever.  i plugged in the mouse, and got no reaction
(i was tailing /var/log/messages at the time).  plugged in a
USB zip drive, still no reaction at all.

  /var/log/dmesg shows nothing related to USB recognition.
and another oddity is that, as the system was booting, i got
a complaint that it couldn't mount the FAT partition as the
kernel had no vfat support.

  but i have vfat support as a module, however, "lsmod" shows
a really skimpy set of loaded modules.  it looks like autoloading
of modules just isn't happening.  i don't even have a module for
the USB bus, which explains a lot.

  i have full module support selected in kernel configuration,
but it seems that the required modules just aren't being loaded
on demand.

  i just tested and "modprobe" seems to work, but i don't
understand why none of this stuff is being loaded at boot
time.

  i'm still running under the new kernel, so i'm willing to
entertain things i can check, but i have no X session (nvidia,
which i haven't even *tried* to set up under 2.5.67).

  any hints?

rday

Re: USB optical mouse on laptop causes bk12 boot to hang

[Greg KH]

On Thu, Apr 10, 2003 at 05:35:34PM -0400, Robert P. J. Day wrote:
>   i have full module support selected in kernel configuration,
> but it seems that the required modules just aren't being loaded
> on demand.
> 
>   i just tested and "modprobe" seems to work, but i don't
> understand why none of this stuff is being loaded at boot
> time.

You probably need to tweak your initscripts to get this to happen.  I
know Red Hat needs this due to some changes in the way modules are used,
and the way modprobe has changed.

>   i'm still running under the new kernel, so i'm willing to
> entertain things i can check, but i have no X session (nvidia,
> which i haven't even *tried* to set up under 2.5.67).

So if you load the usb core, and then plug in your usb device, does it
all work after the machine has booted?

You don't have USB BIOS emulation support enabled in your BIOS do you?

And do you have this same problem on 2.4 kernels?

thanks,

greg k-h

Re: USB optical mouse on laptop causes bk12 boot to hang

[Robert P. J. Day]

On Fri, 11 Apr 2003, Greg KH wrote:

> So if you load the usb core, and then plug in your usb device, does it
> all work after the machine has booted?

in a fairly recent posting, i clarified that a lot of the problem
seemed to be that many of my modules were simply not being loaded
on demand.  not only the USB stuff, but even the vfat module so
i could mount my windows partition.

i finally went back and just built all this stuff into the kernel,
and solved most (not quite all) of the problems.  i find this
kind of surprising -- i've never had to do this before.

and, to answer your question above, before i did all this, to
get my zip drive to work, i modprobe'd usbcore and usb-storage
manually.  to mount the windows partition, same with modprobe
and vfat.

and it's still a mystery why, before i did this, when i booted
with a USB optical mouse plugged in, it hung after
"Freeing unused kernel memory".  *that* is still a puzzler.

rday