PS2 Keyboard and mouse dead in FC3 on Dell Precision 530

[David Chambers]

On Tue, 30 Nov 2004 15:07:36 -0500
"J. Epperson" <epperson at alumni.unc.edu> wrote:

> Sent this last night, but my registration was apparently not complete 
> and it did not go to the list (not in archive, anyway)>
> 
> The i get an error when booting FC3 on a Dell Precision 530 ("i8042.c: 
> Can't read CTR while initializing i8042").  The keyboard and mouse are 
> then "dead" from there on--can't press a key and trigger kudzu before 
> the timeout, can't type a username/password on the X11 login screen, 
> etc.  Odd, since they both worked fine all the way through a graphical 
> install, just not with the resulting kernel config.  Reading suggests 
> apci/apic problem in i8042.c code, I've tried the suggested noapic and 
> noacpi kernel line parms, but nothing's working.  I did include SELinux 
> in "warn" mode in the install, FWIW.
> 
> Installed FC1, and everything worked ok.  Will try FC1-->FC3 upgrade 
> tonight.  Suggestions welcome.
> 
> --jake
> 
>

Is this a smp machine?  I have also had this problem on a dual Xeon with
the FC2/3 i686-smp kernels.  If you have a BIOS option to disable legacy
USB support, you can do this and the machine ought to run okay.  If, like
me, your BIOS will not let you disable legacy USB support without turning
off USB altogether, I found that recompiling the kernel without the
HIGHMEM_64G option also works.  This is of course a pain when it comes to
updating to the next kernel iteration... <sigh>

Hope this gets you going!

- David