Re: [gentoo-user] Restricting Firefox website access

2009-01-23 Thread Matt Causey
 When I asked about content filtering a couple of months ago, everyone said
 Squid was rubbish.


Squid is a solid product.  But it has the same benefit as most other
OSS products - flexibility. Flexibility means we can build a really
nifty self-healing scalable solutions - or we can make decisions that
cause pain.  /shrug Dunno.  YMMV

--
Matt



[gentoo-user] Removing Packages with Portage

2009-05-04 Thread Matt Causey
Hello all!

I am a Gentoo n00b.  I have  question about what the 'expected
behaviour' is/should be when removing packages under Gentoo package
management.  So I read this document:

http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-x86.xml?style=printablefull=1#book_part2

And it says, to remove software, use  'emerge --unmerge'.  Cool, yeah
that seems to do what I expect... So, I have a package madwifi-ng,
which contains some kernel modules.  I want to emerge --unmerge that
package, because I want to make those drivers go away.  That seems to
go well, as when I search for it in portage it show all non-installed
and stuff:

prometheus ~ # emerge --search madwifi-ng
Searching...
[ Results for search key : madwifi-ng ]
[ Applications found : 2 ]

*  net-wireless/madwifi-ng
  Latest version available: 0.9.4
  Latest version installed: [ Not Installed ]
  Size of files: 3,403 kB
  Homepage:  http://www.madwifi-project.org/
  Description:   Next Generation driver for Atheros based IEEE
802.11a/b/g wireless LAN cards
  License:   atheros-hal || ( BSD GPL-2 )

Buuut, there are still kernel modules there, which are owned by that package:

prometheus ~ # ls -lah /lib/modules/2.6.28-gentoo-r5/net/ath_pci.ko
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 77K May  3 20:43
/lib/modules/2.6.28-gentoo-r5/net/ath_pci.ko
prometheus ~ #

and of course they still load.

Sooo, my question.  What is the expected behaviour here?  Are the
ebuilds intended to maintain knowledge of the files they put on a
system, so they can remove the binaries when --unmerge'd?  Are kernel
modules handled differently because of the possibility of damaging a
working system?

Thanks!

--
Matt



Re: [gentoo-user] Removing Packages with Portage

2009-05-04 Thread Matt Causey
 Out of tree kernel modules are a maintenance pain in the ass, and cause
 severely non-obvious problems like this. Every time you upgrade your kernel,
 you must rebuild the out-of-tree modules, and you do that by re-running
 emerge madwifi-ng. This builds a new modules that matches the currently
 configured kernel (/usr/src/linux/) and puts the module in
 /lib/modules/version

 Upgrade your kernel a few times and you have various versions of modules
 floating around. Portage remembers the modules installed by the most recent
 emerge, but AFAIK forgets all the previous ones. This is expected of course -
 when you upgrade firefox-2 to firefox-3 you would not expect the system to
 remember the firefox-2 files (as they are supposed to not be there anymore)

Your explanation is extremely helpful here.  Thanks!  As long as I
know the expectation, I can plan for it when troubleshooting.  I can
certainly see the 'pain in the ass' factor there.  :-)  I was
originally chasing a panic caused by ath_pci - but now that I've
looked more closely at the issue that you describe here, I see that I
did manage to get 2 incompatible interdependent modules installed in
the system...grrr.  I'll be doing some more-than-casual tinkering with
ath_pci vs ath5k in the coming weeks, so I'll probably just plan not
to use that ebuild for the present moment.  :-)  Althoughwould it
be non-trivial for me to try and extend the ebuild to make it clean up
after itself on unmerge?

Along the same lines, how does the ebuild know what to remove on
--unmerge?  For example I'm wandering around and looking at ebuilds:

prometheus ethtool # pwd
/usr/portage/sys-apps/ethtool
prometheus ethtool # ls
ChangeLog  Manifest  ethtool-6.ebuild  metadata.xml
prometheus ethtool #

I see nothing in that ebuild which describes the files that ethtool
put on the system.  Yet an --unmerge removes the binaries and
sourceinteresting.

So I found a CONTENTS file:

prometheus ethtool-6 # pwd
/var/db/pkg/sys-apps/ethtool-6
prometheus ethtool-6 # cat CONTENTS
dir /usr
dir /usr/sbin
obj /usr/sbin/ethtool e830749ff2f81cc25b6629b19e93e3e7 1241002052
dir /usr/share
dir /usr/share/doc
dir /usr/share/doc/ethtool-6
obj /usr/share/doc/ethtool-6/NEWS.bz2 8757829b0fb19bb74c968c203fc76b68
1241002049
obj /usr/share/doc/ethtool-6/AUTHORS.bz2
11b48a9d12c1cebcb2ae6bb29e80d1e1 1241002049
obj /usr/share/doc/ethtool-6/ChangeLog.bz2
08b981d7a1afb29bbac1636ae81026c2 1241002049
obj /usr/share/doc/ethtool-6/README.bz2
3188a9ad571f7e4e4d0c1df4479db6d4 1241002049
dir /usr/share/man
dir /usr/share/man/man8
obj /usr/share/man/man8/ethtool.8.bz2 71a609e8a269cc9dcc0e813e77675ab6
1241002049
prometheus ethtool-6 #

Based on this, it looks like portage internally records the files
which get installed.and then can retrieve this information later
(qfile might want this information, --unmerge might want it...etc.).
Is this the correct way to understand how portage maintains sanity?

Thanks!

--
Matt



[gentoo-user] Firefox without gcc?

2009-05-14 Thread Matt Causey
Hello!

Another Gentoo newb question.  I'm attempting a customized ROOT=/blah
gentoo root filesystem, where we can build a linux client image w/out
the build chain and other dependencies.  Our needs are too intensive
for ulibc, but we're shooting for a sub-250 MB graphical operating
environment.

I'm surprised to see that Firefox (and anecdotally, Xorg) are linked
to gcc libraries:

[chroot-dev] causey-1 ramdisk # ldd ./usr/lib/mozilla-firefox/firefox
linux-gate.so.1 =  (0x00484000)
libpthread.so.0 = /lib/libpthread.so.0 (0x00cae000)
libdl.so.2 = /lib/libdl.so.2 (0x0026b000)
libstdc++.so.6 =
/usr/lib/gcc/i486-pc-linux-gnu/4.1.2/libstdc++.so.6 (0x008c9000)
libm.so.6 = /lib/libm.so.6 (0x0072b000)
libgcc_s.so.1 =
/usr/lib/gcc/i486-pc-linux-gnu/4.1.2/libgcc_s.so.1 (0x0011)
libc.so.6 = /lib/libc.so.6 (0x00d48000)
/lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0x00e89000)

[chroot-dev] causey-1 ramdisk # qfile libstdc++.so.6
sys-devel/gcc (/usr/lib/gcc/i486-pc-linux-gnu/4.1.2/libstdc++.so.6)
[chroot-dev] causey-1 ramdisk #

I had to copy bits of gcc over to get Xorg/xdm working as well.

I'm happy to hand-copy over the bits I need if that is the only
optionbut I guess I was looking for a USE flag or something where
we could build things that are not linked to the build chain?

I did find a dated thread here, which just says, 'deal with it and
move on' - but I wondered if anything has changed.  :-)

http://www.mail-archive.com/gentoo-embed...@lists.gentoo.org/msg00857.html

Cheers,

--
Matt



Re: [gentoo-user] Atheros kernel driver and my wireless access point setup

2009-06-12 Thread Matt Causey


On 12 Jun 2009, at 06:46, Graham Murray gra...@gmurray.org.uk wrote:


Norman Rieß nor...@smash-net.org writes:


What do you want to do with your accesspoint. You will need a bridge
to a wired network if you want your ap attached to that wired
network. This is quite usual though...
Without a bridge to a wired network, only the wlan systems are
connected and can not connect to your wired systems.


Would it not normally be better to route between the wireless and  
wired
networks, with appropriate firewall rules in place, rather than  
bridging

them?

That is the intent of a project I'm working on, and I think it will  
work well.  However most folks don't need the additional complexity of  
multiple networks.  In that case just bridging to the existing subnet  
is sufficient.


Re: [gentoo-user] Kpdf crashes with large documents.

2008-12-31 Thread Matt Causey
You wanna post the PDF?  I'd be curious to see if it crashes kpdf on
my system...


--
Matt

On Wed, Dec 31, 2008 at 6:59 PM, Dale rdalek1...@gmail.com wrote:
 Hi,

 I recently stole me a Motorola Razr phone and it didn't come with the
 manual.  I downloaded it off the Motorola website and was reading, or
 attempting to read, it when Kpdf crashed.  It does this when I scroll
 down to about page 30 or so.  It's a pretty large document since it has
 both English and Spanish.

 I did re-emerge Kpdf, both versions of qt that I have on here and even
 glibc.  Those are the things mentioned in the crash report.  It still
 crashes.  Could this be something besides Kpdf?  Anybody else see
 something in the crash log?

 Here is the crash log:

 (no debugging symbols found)
 Using host libthread_db library /lib/libthread_db.so.1.
 (no debugging symbols found)

 SNIP 

 [Thread debugging using libthread_db enabled]
 [New Thread 0xb697e6d0 (LWP 25418)]
 [New Thread 0xb5c3db90 (LWP 25485)]
 (no debugging symbols found)
 (no debugging symbols found)

  SNIP 

 0xb716a568 in QObject::activate_signal () from /usr/qt/3/lib/libqt-mt.so.3
 #0  0xb716a568 in QObject::activate_signal () from
 /usr/qt/3/lib/libqt-mt.so.3
 #1  0xb74955bc in QApplication::guiThreadAwake ()
   from /usr/qt/3/lib/libqt-mt.so.3
 #2  0xb70bac22 in QEventLoop::processEvents ()
   from /usr/qt/3/lib/libqt-mt.so.3
 #3  0xb71210f0 in QEventLoop::enterLoop () from /usr/qt/3/lib/libqt-mt.so.3
 #4  0xb7120f76 in QEventLoop::exec () from /usr/qt/3/lib/libqt-mt.so.3
 #5  0xb710a4af in QApplication::exec () from /usr/qt/3/lib/libqt-mt.so.3
 #6  0x0805005c in ?? ()
 #7  0xbfc8ff50 in ?? ()
 #8  0xbfc90050 in ?? ()
 #9  0x in ?? ()

 I snipped out the repeating stuff.  Thoughts?

 Thanks.

 Dale

 :-)  :-)

 P.S.  I bought the phone really cheap.  I just feel like I stole it.
 LOL





Re: [gentoo-user] Kpdf crashes with large documents.

2008-12-31 Thread Matt Causey
Well...I've seen more than one dodgy PDF document crash readers
before.  Seems that there must be features or fonts (as mentioned
earlier...) which can crash readers that were not written by Adobe...

On Wed, Dec 31, 2008 at 10:44 PM, darren kirby bulli...@badcomputer.org wrote:
 quoth the Dale:
 Matt Causey wrote:
  You wanna post the PDF?  I'd be curious to see if it crashes kpdf on
  my system...
 
 
  --
  Matt
 
  On Wed, Dec 31, 2008 at 6:59 PM, Dale rdalek1...@gmail.com wrote:
  Hi,
 
  I recently stole me a Motorola Razr phone and it didn't come with the
  manual.  I downloaded it off the Motorola website and was reading, or
  attempting to read, it when Kpdf crashed.  It does this when I scroll
  down to about page 30 or so.  It's a pretty large document since it has
  both English and Spanish.
 
  I did re-emerge Kpdf, both versions of qt that I have on here and even
  glibc.  Those are the things mentioned in the crash report.  It still
  crashes.  Could this be something besides Kpdf?  Anybody else see
  something in the crash log?
 
  Here is the crash log:
 
  (no debugging symbols found)
  Using host libthread_db library /lib/libthread_db.so.1.
  (no debugging symbols found)
 
  SNIP 
 
  [Thread debugging using libthread_db enabled]
  [New Thread 0xb697e6d0 (LWP 25418)]
  [New Thread 0xb5c3db90 (LWP 25485)]
  (no debugging symbols found)
  (no debugging symbols found)
 
   SNIP 
 
  0xb716a568 in QObject::activate_signal () from
  /usr/qt/3/lib/libqt-mt.so.3 #0  0xb716a568 in QObject::activate_signal
  () from
  /usr/qt/3/lib/libqt-mt.so.3
  #1  0xb74955bc in QApplication::guiThreadAwake ()
from /usr/qt/3/lib/libqt-mt.so.3
  #2  0xb70bac22 in QEventLoop::processEvents ()
from /usr/qt/3/lib/libqt-mt.so.3
  #3  0xb71210f0 in QEventLoop::enterLoop () from
  /usr/qt/3/lib/libqt-mt.so.3 #4  0xb7120f76 in QEventLoop::exec () from
  /usr/qt/3/lib/libqt-mt.so.3 #5  0xb710a4af in QApplication::exec () from
  /usr/qt/3/lib/libqt-mt.so.3 #6  0x0805005c in ?? ()
  #7  0xbfc8ff50 in ?? ()
  #8  0xbfc90050 in ?? ()
  #9  0x in ?? ()
 
  I snipped out the repeating stuff.  Thoughts?
 
  Thanks.
 
  Dale
 
  :-)  :-)
 
  P.S.  I bought the phone really cheap.  I just feel like I stole it.
  LOL

 It is pretty big so I'll post a link.

 http://www.phonedog.com/cell-phone-research/motorola-razr-v3i_user-manual.a
spx

 Just click on the link to download the manual.  I think it is about 4 or
 5Mbs or so.  I'm on dialup so it takes me a little while.

 Sorry to rub it in Dale, but it took 12 seconds to download here. And yes, it
 crashed my kpdf ... and my xpdf.

 Oddly, KGhostView renders it fine. Something fishy...


 Thanks

 Dale

 :-)  :-)

 -d
 --
 darren kirby :: Part of the problem since 1976 :: http://badcomputer.org
 ...the number of UNIX installations has grown to 10, with more expected...
 - Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson, June 1972





Re: [gentoo-user] nvidia warning comes a tad late

2009-01-01 Thread Matt Causey
I am  total Gentoo newb :D  but it seems kind of fundamental to the
concept of this distribution that its users are going to make
themselves aware of the details of system updates.  Short of reading
ridiculous amounts of doco...folks should be reading the output of the
emerge commands to learn about edge cases like this one.

In the short few days I've been using Gentoo, there have been several
occasions where had I not read that output, my system would have been
'broken' on next reboot.  At the very least there were additional
steps needed for me to install that package I tried to emerge (missing
USE flags, requests to rebuild other packages, external data
downloads, etc.).

Personally, I rather like this approach.  The folks maintaining the
builds take the time to identify these edge cases, which makes the
portage text output quite helpful.

--
Matt

On Thu, Jan 1, 2009 at 1:09 PM, b.n. brullonu...@gmail.com wrote:
 Volker Armin Hemmann ha scritto:
 On Donnerstag 01 Januar 2009, Michael P. Soulier wrote:
 On 01/01/09 Volker Armin Hemmann said:
 after the emerge you read the messages with elogv and downgrade. No harm
 done.
 I'll be sure to try that, thank you. However, would not avoiding a bad
 upgrade in the first place be a better-behaved tool? Especially when the
 package in question knew that it was likely incompatible?

 I'm not saying that this could not be avoided with more work, I'm saying
 that I shouldn't have to if the tools were better behaved.

 Cheers,
 Mike

 how should 'the tool' know what card you are using?

 The tool knew -in fact it told him of the breakage , *after* doing it.

 and even if portage could
 parse lspci output - why make it slower and more easily to break if all
 breakage can be avoided by simply reading first - then upgrading?

 If you don't know there's something to read...

 Do you
 always install the latest drivers without reading up on them first?

 Usually, yes. Could be my fault, but am I expected to read technical
 docs everytime I update a package?
 Anyway, the system *knows* that there's a problem, so your point is
 moot. The only thing we're asking is to warn and stop *before* and not
 *after*.

 Nvidia's 'deprecation' strategy is a pain in the ass and they are doing it 
 for
 a long time now. So this time it bit you. Next time it will be 6XXX card
 users, then 7XXX card users and so on. That is why you have to go to nvnews
 first and then upgrade. Not the other way round.

 Thanks for advice.

 m.








Re: [gentoo-user] dhcp and re-exec of init in log file

2009-01-05 Thread Matt Causey
On Sun, Jan 4, 2009 at 12:39 PM, Michael George geo...@mutualdata.com wrote:
 On Sun, Jan 04, 2009 at 05:02:38AM +, Stroller wrote:
 It might be helpful to post the EXACT error messages. I doubt if I'm able
 to help, but it seems to me that posting without them may be one of those
 people-may-tend-to-ignore-your-message mistakes.

 Good point, thank you.

 One of the message in the log file regards init:

 Jan  2 09:00:38 brego dhcpd: DHCPACK on 192.168.0.253 to 00:a0:c9:68:03:05 
 via eth0
 Jan  2 09:01:07 brego init: Trying to re-exec init
 Jan  2 09:01:08 brego locale-gen: Generating locale-archive: forcing # of 
 jobs to 1
 Jan  2 09:10:01 brego cron[7189]: (root) CMD (test -x /usr/sbin/run-crons  
 /usr/sbin/run-crons )

 So the only thing near it is locale-gen, which doesn't appear in any
 cron or logrotate scripts.

 The other error is from DHCP:

 Jan  2 07:16:47 brego crontab[26016]: (root) BEGIN EDIT (root)
 Jan  2 07:17:05 brego dhcpd: Internet Systems Consortium DHCP Server
 V3.1.1-Gentoo
 Jan  2 07:17:05 brego dhcpd: Copyright 2004-2008 Internet Systems
 Consortium.
 Jan  2 07:17:05 brego dhcpd: All rights reserved.
 Jan  2 07:17:05 brego dhcpd: Usage: dhcpd [-p UDP port #] [-d] [-f]
 [-cf config-file] [-lf lease-file]  [-user user] [-group
 group] [-chroot dir]   [-tf trace-output-file]
 [-play trace-input-file]  [-t] [-T] [-s server] [if0
 [...ifN]]
 Jan  2 07:17:05 brego dhcpd:
 Jan  2 07:17:05 brego dhcpd: If you did not get this software from 
 ftp.isc.org, please
 Jan  2 07:17:05 brego dhcpd: get the latest from ftp.isc.org and install that 
 before
 Jan  2 07:17:05 brego dhcpd: requesting help.
 Jan  2 07:17:05 brego dhcpd:
 Jan  2 07:17:05 brego dhcpd: If you did get this software from ftp.isc.org 
 and have not
 Jan  2 07:17:05 brego dhcpd: yet read the README, please read it before 
 requesting help.
 Jan  2 07:17:05 brego dhcpd: If you intend to request help from the 
 dhcp-ser...@isc.org
 Jan  2 07:17:05 brego dhcpd: mailing list, please read the section on the 
 README about
 Jan  2 07:17:05 brego dhcpd: submitting bug reports and requests for help.
 Jan  2 07:17:05 brego dhcpd:
 Jan  2 07:17:05 brego dhcpd: Please do not under any circumstances send 
 requests for
 Jan  2 07:17:05 brego dhcpd: help directly to the authors of this software - 
 please
 Jan  2 07:17:05 brego dhcpd: send them to the appropriate mailing list as 
 described in
 Jan  2 07:17:05 brego dhcpd: the README file.
 Jan  2 07:17:05 brego dhcpd:
 Jan  2 07:17:05 brego dhcpd: exiting.
 Jan  2 07:20:01 brego cron[7644]: (root) CMD (test -x /usr/sbin/run-crons  
 /usr/sbin/run-crons )


 And there is nothing right before or after that which seem suspicious.

 Stroller.



 On 4 Jan 2009, at 02:29, Michael George wrote:

 That seems to be a poor subject for my question, so I reposted with
 something more descriptive...

 On Sat, Jan 03, 2009 at 07:17:41PM -0500, Michael George wrote:
 About a week ago I noticed a couple entries in /var/log/messages (as
 reported by logwatch) that seemed odd. ...

 One of the entries is a Usage: message from dhcp, as though something
 tried to restart the DHCP server.

 The other is Re-execs of init: 1 times.  I found some references to
 this on the 'net, but generally when discussing prelink.  I don't have
 prelink installed, though.
 ...


 --
 -M

 There are 10 kinds of people in this world:
Those who can count in binary and those who cannot.




Regarding the dhcp error, it looks to me like there's a cron to try
and do something with dhcpd - most likely with broken syntax.  Check
your crontabs...



Re: [gentoo-user] Restricting Firefox website access

2009-01-10 Thread Matt Causey

 1. Put all your mirror sites in the exception list. This can get tedious as
 some ebuilds list many mirrors for sources

 or

 2. wget using ftp

 or

 3. set up a proxy

 The easiest is #2 by far

 Does portage use wget over http by default?  Can I change a setting to
 make it use ftp?

 - Grant



I think you would do well to setup a squid proxy and block outbound
traffic for the affected machines.  We've had great success with squid
in our environment.  This gives you a tremendous amount of flexibility
on your access control, and it means you don't have to be concerned
about which transport methods are used when updating/installing.
Added bonus is that the squid caches your Gentoo download objects.

--
Matt



Re: [gentoo-user] Restricting Firefox website access

2009-01-10 Thread Matt Causey


 I think you would do well to setup a squid proxy and block outbound
 traffic for the affected machines.  We've had great success with squid
 in our environment.  This gives you a tremendous amount of flexibility
 on your access control, and it means you don't have to be concerned
 about which transport methods are used when updating/installing.
 Added bonus is that the squid caches your Gentoo download objects.

 Is that tough to set up?  I would think an iptables solution would be
 easier, but maybe that won't work out.


Well, you'll end up using iptables anyway right?  If you really want
to -force- folks to get out through a proxy, that is.  Since you
mention that the router is a gentoo box, should be an easy one.

Tough to setup Squid? Naw.  Of course, it's like most things, we don't
know much about your network or the scope of your requirements.  For
our use case, we needed the following:

-forced access through the proxy
-website URL blacklisting and custom redirection based on massive regex lists
--Automated notification on certain 'violations'
-user account login to the proxy before internet access
-username tied to all proxy logs
-'manager' access to log data via nifty graphs on a web server

So, ours took some time.  :)

Ya, I know these folks were uuber paranoid, and wanted the ability to
nab folks for what they felt like was inappropriate internet usage...
Anyway your situation sounds much simpler.  So simple in fact that
just a few tweaks to the default squid.conf can provide you with a
functional config.

There are heaps of doco out there on configuring Squid, so you should
have a look and see what you think.  You can easily get a little test
proxy going on a desktop or laptop to try it out.  :-)

Hope this helps!

--
Matt



[gentoo-user] serio / atkbd / PS/2 Strangeness with Serial port adapter

2009-08-05 Thread Matt Causey
Hello!

Apologies if this really is't the right forum (suggestions on the
right forum would be welcome).

Our company presently operates a large number of thin client terminals
running LTSP, with a shared NFS root filesystem, and all that stuff.
To remove the external runtime dependencies from the image, I've built
a gentoo ramdisk that contains all the tools needed for the terminals
- which can be downloaded via tftp.

Things are working well - except for one problem.  One the new image,
some of the input devices don't work we expected.  As you might
imagine in a production environment, we have a number of different
barcode scanners that attach to these terminals.  Many of the new ones
are USB HID compliant devices - which is great.  Most of them are
actually serial port devices, that connect to the terminal via a
serial -- PS/2 'wedge'.  The PS/2 wedge devices are the ones that
don't work correctly.

If we connect the scanner to the thin client, and boot the image, the
scanner does not work.  It does not show up at all as an input device:

blablahostname / # cat /proc/bus/input/devices
I: Bus=0003 Vendor=046d Product=c001 Version=0110
N: Name=Logitech USB Mouse
P: Phys=usb-:00:03.0-1/input0
S: Sysfs=/devices/pci:00/:00:03.0/usb2/2-1/2-1:1.0/input/input0
U: Uniq=
H: Handlers=mouse0 event0
B: EV=17
B: KEY=7 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
B: REL=103
B: MSC=10

I: Bus=0003 Vendor=03f0 Product=0024 Version=0110
N: Name=CHICONY HP Basic USB Keyboard
P: Phys=usb-:00:03.1-2/input0
S: Sysfs=/devices/pci:00/:00:03.1/usb3/3-2/3-2:1.0/input/input1
U: Uniq=
H: Handlers=kbd event1
B: EV=120013
B: KEY=1 7 ff9f207a c14057ff febeffdf ffef  fffe
B: MSC=10
B: LED=7

I: Bus=0010 Vendor=001f Product=0001 Version=0100
N: Name=PC Speaker
P: Phys=isa0061/input0
S: Sysfs=/devices/platform/pcspkr/input/input2
U: Uniq=
H: Handlers=kbd event2
B: EV=40001
B: SND=6

So, I enabled debugging on the contoller driver(serio.c), and I see
that the device generates noise when connected:

[  458.875614] drivers/input/serio/i8042.c: f2 - i8042 (kbd-data) [444989]
[  458.908119] drivers/input/serio/i8042.c: fe - i8042 (interrupt, 0,
1, timeout) [445022]
[  458.908144] drivers/input/serio/i8042.c: ed - i8042 (kbd-data) [445022]
[  458.940151] drivers/input/serio/i8042.c: fe - i8042 (interrupt, 0,
1, timeout) [445054]
[  458.940225] drivers/input/serio/i8042.c: d4 - i8042 (command) [445054]
[  458.940234] drivers/input/serio/i8042.c: f2 - i8042 (parameter) [445054]
[  458.972190] drivers/input/serio/i8042.c: fe - i8042 (interrupt, 1,
12, timeout) [445086]
[  458.972204] drivers/input/serio/i8042.c: d4 - i8042 (command) [445086]
[  458.972212] drivers/input/serio/i8042.c: ed - i8042 (parameter) [445086]
[  459.004227] drivers/input/serio/i8042.c: fe - i8042 (interrupt, 1,
12, timeout) [445118]
[20171.684870] drivers/input/serio/i8042.c: 0b - i8042 (interrupt, 0,
1) [20162195]

However - the atkbd driver does not pick the device up at all.

So, I did find a workaround (which is NOT acceptable for this
deployment).  Remember the PS/2 'wedge' I mentioned?  Well, it has an
extra PS/2 port for your keyboard.  If I connect a PS/2 keyboard to
that thing, suddenly my scanner starts working.

We see some chatter from the controller driver, then one of these:

[23811.805578] input: AT Translated Set 2 keyboard as
/devices/platform/i8042/serio0/input/input6

Aaaand a new device is registered as an input device:

yayayayhostname# cat /proc/bus/input/devices
I: Bus=0003 Vendor=046d Product=c001 Version=0110
N: Name=Logitech USB Mouse
P: Phys=usb-:00:03.0-1/input0
S: Sysfs=/devices/pci:00/:00:03.0/usb2/2-1/2-1:1.0/input/input0
U: Uniq=
H: Handlers=mouse0 event0
B: EV=17
B: KEY=7 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
B: REL=103
B: MSC=10

I: Bus=0003 Vendor=03f0 Product=0024 Version=0110
N: Name=CHICONY HP Basic USB Keyboard
P: Phys=usb-:00:03.1-2/input0
S: Sysfs=/devices/pci:00/:00:03.1/usb3/3-2/3-2:1.0/input/input1
U: Uniq=
H: Handlers=kbd event1
B: EV=120013
B: KEY=1 7 ff9f207a c14057ff febeffdf ffef  fffe
B: MSC=10
B: LED=7

I: Bus=0010 Vendor=001f Product=0001 Version=0100
N: Name=PC Speaker
P: Phys=isa0061/input0
S: Sysfs=/devices/platform/pcspkr/input/input2
U: Uniq=
H: Handlers=kbd event2
B: EV=40001
B: SND=6

I: Bus=0011 Vendor=0001 Product=0001 Version=ab41
N: Name=AT Translated Set 2 keyboard
P: Phys=isa0060/serio0/input0
S: Sysfs=/devices/platform/i8042/serio0/input/input6
U: Uniq=
H: Handlers=kbd event3
B: EV=120013
B: KEY=4 200 3803078 f800d001 fedf ffef  fffe
B: MSC=10
B: LED=7

So, I don't get it.  We had this all working fine with the (now
ancient version) LTSP configuration, linux 2.4, etc.  Did some drastic
things change in 2.6 with keyboard management?

I am completely out of ideas.  The only thing I can figure is that the
PS/2 wedge thing isn't doing the right thing, and as a result the 2.6
version of the atkbd driver isn't binding it?   Maybe there is some