attaching a keyboard later

[Brian Candler]

On Sun, Feb 19, 2006 at 11:31:20AM +0100, Oliver Lehmann wrote:
> back in the 3.x days It was possible to attach a keyboard later to a
> system after it was booted up and having it working. If I'm not mistaken
> this was possible via a boot(8) switch. I can't find a switch in the man
> page which reads like it does that now. Can someone tell me if it is still
> possible and maybe what to do?

I can't speak for -CURRENT as I'm not running it right now, but on 6.0 the
atkbd(4) manpage says:

   Driver Flags
     The atkbd driver accepts the following driver flags.  They can be set
     either in /boot/device.hints, or else from within the boot loader (see
     loader(8)).

     bit 0 (FAIL_IF_NO_KBD)
           By default the atkbd driver will install even if a keyboard is not
           actually connected to the system.  This option prevents the driver
           from being installed in this situation.
...
     bit 3 (NO_PROBE_TEST)
           When this option is given, the atkbd driver will not test the key-
           board port during the probe routine.  Some machines hang during
           boot when this test is performed.

but unfortunately doesn't give an exact example of how to use this, nor does
it give the default setting of the flags. ISTR that in FreeBSD 4.x, you had
a flags=0x01 setting in the kernel configuration file, which you could
change to 0x00 to get the keyboard to work even if not detected at bootup
time.

I guess you could try something like

hint.atkbd.0.flags=0x00
or
hint.atkbd.0.flags=0x08

If you find out exactly what this is, please submit a patch for the manpage
:-)

HTH,

Brian.