Date: Sun, 12 Aug 2001 17:25:32 -0700 (PDT) From: John Baldwin <jhb@FreeBSD.org> To: Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com> Cc: current@FreeBSD.ORG, Sean Kelly <smkelly@zombie.org>, Kazutaka YOKOTA <yokota@zodiac.mech.utsunomiya-u.ac.jp>, Matt Dillon <dillon@earth.backplane.com>, Mike Smith <msmith@FreeBSD.ORG>, Nate Williams <nate@yogotech.com> Subject: Re: FreeBSD's aggressive keyboard probe/attach Message-ID: <XFMail.010812172532.jhb@FreeBSD.org> In-Reply-To: <3B76D568.5DC1603D@mindspring.com>
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On 12-Aug-01 Terry Lambert wrote: > The FreeBSD keyboard detection is another matter; FreeBSD > will assume that there is no keyboard, and try to "helpfully" > drop you into serial console mode. Some of this _used_ to > be mitigated by checking for the "extended keyboard bit" in > the "keyboard identify" BIOS call, but this was a problem > for people with antique keyboards. Umm, this is the -P flag to boot2 which is no longer on by default. Not a kernel issue. > My suggestion for a probe in this case would be to set up > a different handler for the reset signal, and then ask the > keyboard to send the reset signal. If it does, then there > is a keyboard present. Yeah, and resetting the controller works fine on machines that don't have keyboards, so it returns false positives. > More ideally, the FreeBSD box would detect whether or not > the video card had been disabled, and use _that_ to decide > whether or not to use a keyboard. It would become the job > of the video driver -- be it a regular driver, or be it an > LCD driver -- to make the distinction. This might be practical except that lots of motherboards ship with built-in video these days. > Absolutely ideally, FreeBSD would come up with the boot code > on _both_ (this is an option), and then be told by the user > to not use one of them -- or boot using _both_, until told > to do otherwise. > > This would _also_ solve the Alpha serial console dance. What dance? Works great for me. If SRM uses serial console, so does FreeBSD. If SRM uses vidconsole, so does FreeBSD. In fact, this is the _only_ way it can work on the Alpha since SRM just gives you one console device handle and one boot device handle. Have you actually used an Alpha before? :-P -- John Baldwin <jhb@FreeBSD.org> -- http://www.FreeBSD.org/~jhb/ PGP Key: http://www.baldwin.cx/~john/pgpkey.asc "Power Users Use the Power to Serve!" - http://www.FreeBSD.org/ To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message
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