In article <20000524124423.A10231@turtle.tat.physik.uni-tuebingen.de>,
koenig@tat.physik.uni-tuebingen.de (Harald Koenig) writes:
> usign 2.2.14 kernel with a Gericom Avangarde notebook the keyboard
> and PS/2 mouse sometimes locks up (no interrupts anymore) when using
> autorepeat keys (e.g. scrolling in an editor, both on text console and
> with X11 running) for while. there are no kernel messages at all.
>
> closing/reopening /dev/psaux (e.g. stop/start gpm, or switch from/to
> X11 vc) `fixes' this lockup and both mouse and keyboard work again.
>
> any idea what's wrong here and how to fix this problem ?
> while X is running it's hard to close/open /dev/psaux
> and when the keyboard got stuck, how to switch to another vc ??
Funny. I have the same problem here and I also have a Gericom
notebook. I was just trying to track this problem down when I saw
your message.
A few more hints:
- I noticed that the problem disappears when I disable
APM support in the kernel.
- I can get the keyboard/mouse to work again by logging
into the machine via telnet and doing an "echo >/dev/psaux"
- when the keyboard is hung, the special keys to dim the backlight
(Fn-F9/Fn-F10) and the suspend key (Fn-Esc) don't seem to work
either. I'm not sure, but I always thought that these keys are
handled by the keyboard controller directly, i.e. Linux doesn't
know about them (pressing one of these keys does not seem
to generate a keyboard interrupt according to xosview). That
would indicate that the keyboard controller must be hung
somehow.
- I have observed false readings from the battery status monitor
happening frequently along with the keyboard/mouse hangups (i.e.
the status monitor would tell me my battery was exhausted when
in fact it was not).
All of this IMHO indicates a BIOS re-entrancy problem. I have just
spent an hour or two hunting down a BIOS update for my notebook.
The notebook was delivered with a "SystemSoft MobilePRO" BIOS version
2.14. I have just located version 2.15 at the web page of a Taiwanese
company named Clevo (http://www.clevo.com.tw) who seem to be the
original manufacturers.
The notebook still works after installing the new BIOS update (relief),
but it's yet to early to tell if it helped. I'll keep you informed.
Rob
----------------------------------------------------------------
Robert Kaiser email: rkaiser AT sysgo DOT de
SYSGO RTS GmbH
D-55270 Klein-Winternheim / Germany
-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed May 31 2000 - 21:00:11 EST