Sudden keyboard problems after upgrade from RH9 to FC2

[Scot L. Harris]

On Mon, 2004-08-30 at 10:42, Raymond C. Rodgers wrote:
> On Mon, 2004-08-23 at 17:43, Raymond C. Rodgers wrote:
> > I just "upgraded" my Red Hat 9 installation which had been very stable
> > for a long while to Fedora Core 2, and began to notice some problems
> > utilizing my PS/2 keyboard. The symptoms of the problem are loss of
> > keyboard functionality; meaning I can't type a single letter or even
> > toggle the num or caps locks. The issue arises sometimes when I attempt
> > to switch from one virtual terminal to another (say from X windows to a
> > command line via control-alt-F1), and almost always when I press the num
> > lock key (to turn on the number lock on the numeric keypad) at any point
> > during boot or running of FC2. I did not experience these problems under
> > RH9 and the other operating systems (BeOS, OpenBSD, Win2k) I run on this
> > system aren't affected similarly.
> > 

Have not heard of or experienced the problem described above.  Are you
using a kvm?  There are some known problems with kvm switches.

> > I struggled through most of the day to get the installation of Fedora up
> > to date (struggling first with up2date/up2date-nox and then resorting to
> > downloading the rpm's listed by up2date and installing them via rpm) but
> > the problem seems to have remained. When I first started FC2 after
> > installation I got an error message in X that suggested filing a bug
> > report with the results of what I believe "groff" with XKB if I remember
> > correctly. But it didn't present any answers to what was going wrong and
> > the symptoms I have are present even in Run Level 2, so I disregarded it
> > and no longer get the error message.

It sounds like two issues here.  First issue, reconfigure up2date or yum
to use a different mirror site.  The default settings in /etc/yum.conf
or /etc/sysconfig/rhn/sources point to heavily overloaded Red Hat
servers.  Response times to them can be horrible causing problems.  I
have also found yum to be much faster than up2date particularly if you
selected to download the source packages.

Second issue, sounds like something that has been discussed on the list
in the past.  In your /etc/X11/XF86Config file you probably need to
modify xfree to xorg on the XKB line.

       Option      "XkbRules" "xorg"
#       Option      "XkbRules" "xfree86"

This appears to be a bug in the upgrade code.  FC2 now uses the xorg
packages instead of the xfree86.  On a clean install it now uses the
xorg.conf file instead.

I believe a subsequent update of one of the packages actually corrects
this problem.  However on a newly upgraded system this will cause the
type of error message you have listed.

> > 
> > Anyone else have similar problems and/or (better yet) have a solution
> > other than avoiding the num lock?
> 
> By the overwhelming lack of response to this message, I take it this has
> been a unique experience... Does anyone have any possible solutions for
> it?
> 

Busy list, good to prod a little if you don't get a response the first
time.  :)

> Raymond
> -- 
> Raymond C. Rodgers <rh at bbnk.dhs.org>
-- 
Scot L. Harris
webid at cfl.rr.com

Mate, this parrot wouldn't VOOM if you put four million volts through it!
		-- Monty Python