Reward for fixing keyboard support in FreeBSD, apply within
In the last couple of days I've been fighting with a evaluation IBM BladeCenter. For those that don't know, it's a 7U rackmount box with 14 slots that can take one PC each. http://www.ibm.com/servers/eserver/blades/ All the PC's share a single CD, floppy and the builtin KVM. CD, floppy and the KVM are USB connected. There are two problems with FreeBSD on this box: 1. No FreeBSD version boots from CD on this box. Tried with 4.x and 5.x. Both complain that they can't find their own boot device and don't know how to load the kernel. There are some signs that booting from any USB connected CDROM on any hardware is broken. 2. The more troubling problem is that upon bootup the keyboard does not work. The problem is that there are actually two USB keyboards. The first one is apparently some dummy device connected to the KVM while the second is the working keyboard. Logging in through the network and running kbdcontrol -k /dev/kbd2 activates the keyboard. The problem is that only a single keyboard can be active at any time in FreeBSD and on boot the first detected keyboard becomes active. As the first USB keyboard on the Bladecenter is not actually connected anywhere, the keyboard is basically dead as soon as the FreeBSD kernel takes over. The box does not have any serial ports, so a serial console is out of the question. Needless to say, both Windows and Linux work just fine on the Bladecenter. The main reason for working keyboard support is, that both under Windows and Linux, *all* keyboards are active at the same time. On FreeBSD only a single keyboard can be active at any time. My company would really like to deploy the Bladecenter as it is otherwise a very solid solution for our problem. But 99.9% of our servers are FreeBSD and the above problems are a real showstopper. That's why I'm offering a reward to anybody who produces working patches that are polished enough to be included both in -stable and -current. I will do my best to provide all the neccesary information as well as an account on the box. I don't have much time left, as I will have to return the evaluation box soon, so if you think you are able to solve the problems, send me an email *now*. ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Reward for fixing keyboard support in FreeBSD, apply within
Hello Blaz, On Dec 07, Blaz Zupan wrote: 1. No FreeBSD version boots from CD on this box. Tried with 4.x and 5.x. Both complain that they can't find their own boot device and don't know how to load the kernel. There are some signs that booting from any USB connected CDROM on any hardware is broken. I'm curious as to the output of lsdev from the loader. Though I doubt I can help you. 2. The more troubling problem is that upon bootup the keyboard does not work. The problem is that there are actually two USB keyboards. The first one is apparently some dummy device connected to the KVM while the second is the working keyboard. Logging in through the network and running kbdcontrol -k /dev/kbd2 activates the keyboard. The problem is that only a single keyboard can be active at any time in FreeBSD and on boot the first detected keyboard becomes active. As the first USB keyboard on the Bladecenter is not actually connected anywhere, the keyboard is basically dead as soon as the FreeBSD kernel takes over. The box does not have any serial ports, so a serial console is out of the question. You could stick a kbdcontrol -k /dev/kbd2 in rc.local or something similiar. Or you could try (warning, wild guess) the following in the boot loader set hint.sc.2.at=isa set hint.sc.2.flags=0x200 hth, --Mat -- We peer so suspiciously at each other that we cannot see that we Canadians are standing on the mountaintop of human wealth, freedom and privilege. - Pierre Elliott Trudeau ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Reward for fixing keyboard support in FreeBSD, apply within
I'm curious as to the output of lsdev from the loader. Though I doubt I can help you. I'll mail it to you tomorrow when I'm at the office. You could stick a kbdcontrol -k /dev/kbd2 in rc.local or something similiar. Or you could try (warning, wild guess) the following in the boot loader set hint.sc.2.at=isa set hint.sc.2.flags=0x200 Sure, I'm using the kbdcontrol hack right now. But that's hardly a solution. I want to have FreeBSD fixed so that dirty workarounds like this are not needed. To even install FreeBSD on this box, you need to jump through hoops: - create a customized boot floppy without USB support - boot the customized floppy (slow) - install through the network - alternatively, setup a PXE boot with a custom kernel - complicated After installation you need to remotely login as your keyboard again won't work because a GENERIC kernel with USB will be installed. Then you add kbdcontrol -k /dev/kbd2 to your startup files. All this is extremely clumsy. What if FreeBSD crashes and you land in single user mode? You're screwed, because /etc/rc.local doesn't run. So you need to put it into your shells startup file. Clumsy. Errorprone. So - I want this fixed once and for all. I'm sure there already are and there will be more hardware like this and if FreeBSD wants to be a server operating system, it needs to support new hardware, not have more clumsy workarounds. ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Reward for fixing keyboard support in FreeBSD, apply within
On Dec 07, Blaz Zupan wrote: [ ... snip ...] You could stick a kbdcontrol -k /dev/kbd2 in rc.local or something similiar. Or you could try (warning, wild guess) the following in the boot loader set hint.sc.2.at=isa set hint.sc.2.flags=0x200 Sure, I'm using the kbdcontrol hack right now. But that's hardly a solution. I want to have FreeBSD fixed so that dirty workarounds like this are not needed. To even install FreeBSD on this box, you need to jump through hoops: - create a customized boot floppy without USB support - boot the customized floppy (slow) - install through the network - alternatively, setup a PXE boot with a custom kernel - complicated After installation you need to remotely login as your keyboard again won't work because a GENERIC kernel with USB will be installed. Then you add kbdcontrol -k /dev/kbd2 to your startup files. All this is extremely clumsy. What if FreeBSD crashes and you land in single user mode? You're screwed, because /etc/rc.local doesn't run. So you need to put it into your shells startup file. Clumsy. Errorprone. So - I want this fixed once and for all. I'm sure there already are and there will be more hardware like this and if FreeBSD wants to be a server operating system, it needs to support new hardware, not have more clumsy workarounds. I sense you have strong feelings about this :) The way I see it, FreeBSD needs serious hacking to have multiple concurrent keyboards support without serious hacking. The only other option is to have a flag to indicate which keyboard to use. If your keyboard works before the kernel is active (eg, to boot loader), then please try my second suggestion above. Good luck. --Mat -- If you optimize everything, you will always be unhappy. - Don Knuth ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Reward for fixing keyboard support in FreeBSD, apply within
On Dec 07, Mathew Kanner wrote: The way I see it, FreeBSD needs serious hacking to have multiple concurrent keyboards support without serious hacking. ugh, you know what I mean. -- We peer so suspiciously at each other that we cannot see that we Canadians are standing on the mountaintop of human wealth, freedom and privilege. - Pierre Elliott Trudeau ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Reward for fixing keyboard support in FreeBSD, apply within
Blaz == Blaz Zupan [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Blaz In the last couple of days I've been fighting with a evaluation Blaz IBM BladeCenter. For those that don't know, it's a 7U rackmount Blaz box with 14 slots that can take one PC each. Blaz http://www.ibm.com/servers/eserver/blades/ While keyboard support on FreeBSD should be fixed, you might want to take a look at ironsystems (ironsystem.com) offerings. They have several different bladeservers from 8 to 16 nodes per chassy. In particular, they have a 16-in-2-U (WOW). The clincher is that they explicity support FreeBSD on their platforms. Dave. -- |David Gilbert, Independent Contractor. | Two things can only be | |Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]| equal if and only if they | |http://daveg.ca | are precisely opposite. | =GLO ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Reward for fixing keyboard support in FreeBSD, apply within
On Sun, 7 Dec 2003, David Gilbert wrote: DG While keyboard support on FreeBSD should be fixed, you might want to DG take a look at ironsystems (ironsystem.com) offerings. They have DG several different bladeservers from 8 to 16 nodes per chassy. In DG particular, they have a 16-in-2-U (WOW). Unfortunately you have mistype the domain name, so here are correct URLs: http://www.ironsystems.com/ base URL http://www.ironsystems.com/products/iservers/uclass.htm blade solutions at large http://www.ironsystems.com/products/iservers/uclass/u9016.htm 16-at-2U Sincerely, D.Marck [DM5020, MCK-RIPE, DM3-RIPN] *** Dmitry Morozovsky --- D.Marck --- Wild Woozle --- [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Reward for fixing keyboard support in FreeBSD, apply within
On Sun, 7 Dec 2003, Mathew Kanner wrote: On Dec 07, Mathew Kanner wrote: The way I see it, FreeBSD needs serious hacking to have multiple concurrent keyboards support without serious hacking. ugh, you know what I mean. With mouse support, we have a layer of indirection with moused that combines input from various mouse devices into a single event stream via /dev/sysmouse. While I don't think we want a keyboard daemon at this point, we might well need to add a similar abstraction in the kernel so that different keyboard sources can be combined. Just plugging in a USB mouse and having it just work is extremely beneficial, and I agree we need to be able to support the same with keyboards. Robert N M Watson FreeBSD Core Team, TrustedBSD Projects [EMAIL PROTECTED] Senior Research Scientist, McAfee Research ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Reward for fixing keyboard support in FreeBSD, apply within
At 6:13 PM +0100 12/7/03, Blaz Zupan wrote: In the last couple of days I've been fighting with a evaluation IBM BladeCenter. [...] My company would really like to deploy the Bladecenter as it is otherwise a very solid solution for our problem. But 99.9% of our servers are FreeBSD and the above problems are a real showstopper. That's why I'm offering a reward to anybody who produces working patches that are polished enough to be included both in -stable and -current. I will do my best to provide all the neccesary information as well as an account on the box. This is not a project I could take on, but it is nice to see someone offer a real reward to have this fixed. Hopefully some developer can take you up on that! -- Garance Alistair Drosehn= [EMAIL PROTECTED] Senior Systems Programmer or [EMAIL PROTECTED] Rensselaer Polytechnic Instituteor [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
