Fedora 13 usb key failure

[Jack Howarth]

On Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 02:18:33PM +0100, Alan Cox wrote:
> O> At that point, after the installer's vmlinux has been
> > booted, the keystrokes on the usb keyboard are not
> > recognized when attempting to select the installation
> > media check options. This is quite odd because the
> > same usb keyboard is usable earlier in the installation
> 
> Odd it may see but not unexpected. Until the kernel loads the BIOS is
> doing emulation of a PC keyboard via USB. After the kernel USB loads the
> OS takes over control. If that fails you have a problem.
> 
> >   Is there any workaround for this (as the Sun workstation
> > only has usb ports for keyboard and mouse) short of
> > waiting for Fedora 14?
> 
> I guess a serial or vnc based network install might be helpful for
> debugging but hardly useful for production.
> 
> Try booting with the option "irqpoll" just in case the USB stuff is
> having interrupt problems.

Unfortunately, neither irqpoll nor noapic eliminated the non-functional
usb keyboard at the media check. I did notice that the F11 x86_64
install seemed to randomly have issues with the keyboard as well in
the media check but F13 is always failing. I am currently burning F12
x86_64's install DVD to see if that works any better.
      Jack
ps I have two identical Sun W2100Z with the latest 2.5 Phoenix firmware
with F10 x86_64 installed and both behave the same way so a hardware
failure is highly unlikely.