2 keyboards, 2 mice, 2 monitors with 1 PC; possible?

Micah micahjon at ywave.com
Thu Oct 13 19:54:00 PDT 2005


Rob wrote:
> 
> --- Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog at FreeBSD.org> wrote:
> 
> 
>>On Thursday, 13 October 2005 at 14:21:44 -0700, Rob
>>wrote:
>>
>>>I'm using 5-Stable right now.
>>>
>>>I wonder if FreeBSD allows me to have two
>>>independent users working
>>>on the same PC, by using two monitors, two
>>>keyboards and two mice,
>>>all connected to a single PC.
>>>
>>>xorg supports dual-head, which could be
>>>a starting point.
>>>
>>>But how about the keyboards and mice?
>>>Should that be one keyboard/mouse pair as PS/2,
>>>and a second pair as USB? How would that
>>>be detected and controlled?
>>>
>>>Is such a setup supported by the FreeBSD kernel?
>>>Has someone tried this?
>>
>>I've certainly used multiple monitors, multiple mice
>>and a single
>>keyboard in a single user environment, and that
>>works fine.  I've also
>>run multiple X servers on the same machine.  X
>>configuration allows
>>you to specify which device to use.  The only part
>>I'm hazy about is
>>how to map the keyboard definition to hardware
>>devices.  Looking at
>>/dev, however, I see:
>>
>>  crw-------  1 root  wheel    3,  63 Sep 11 15:52
>>/dev/kbd0
>>  crw-------  1 root  wheel    3,  31 Sep 11 15:52
>>/dev/sysmouse
>>
>>I just tried plugging in a USB keyboard and got
>>this:
>>
>>  crw-------  1 root  wheel    3,  63 Sep 11 15:52
>>/dev/kbd0
>>  crw-------  1 root  wheel    3, 195 Sep 11 15:52
>>/dev/kbd1
>>  crw-------  1 root  wheel    3,  31 Sep 11 15:52
>>/dev/sysmouse
>>
>>(yes, the date *must* be wrong).  This looks very
>>promising, but as
>>long as it was plugged in, X only responded to
>>/dev/kbd1.  When I
>>disconnected it, /dev/kbd0 responded again.  So
>>possibly there's some
>>issue with the keyboard mapping.
> 
> 
> Thanks so much for the helpful response.
> Sounds good indeed, though I myself have to dig a
> bit deeper into the technical and configurational
> aspects of all this.
> I asked here first, because I wanted to avoid to
> run against the impossible when I will be trying
> to understand and actually do these kind of things.
> 
> When googled on this issue, I got only Linux
> related sites . The main issue there appears to
> be that the standard kernel can only handle one
> single keyboard. A not-so-trivial hack to the
> Linux kernel is needed for two keyboards....
> 
> Does your observation above tell me that the
> standard FreeBSD kernel (as of 5-Stable) is
> already capable of handling more than one
> keyboard?
> 
> Regards,
> Rob.

Check out 
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&as_qdr=all&q=+site:lists.freebsd.org+freebsd+multiple+keyboards
A few minutes of reading suggests:
FreeBSD recognizes multiple keyboards.
Console can only accept input from one keyboard at a time.
You can read input from the keyboard that is not in use.
Setting up X may be tricky.

HTH,
Micah


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