Pressing CTRL-ALT-SPACE on usb keyboard freezes FreeBSD

[Modulok]

On 6/21/07, Manolis Kiagias <sonicy at otenet.gr> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> This is a very weird symptom, noticed today for the first time. I have a
> cheap Microsoft wireless keybaord with USB connection, on one FreeBSD
> 6.2 release machine that acts as a lightweight server / occasional
> desktop. While in the console (no X running) I accidentally pressed
> CTRL-ALT-SPACE, received a message about USB controller error (sadly
> cannot remember exactly) and the machine froze completely. Tried from
> another machine but to no avail, it was completely frozen. After restart
> I tried it a second time, again same results.
> Changed some bios settings (disabled legacy USB support, that was
> actually the only option for USB besides disabling it completely) and
> checked a third time, still the same.
> Now I know this has something to do with the USB but the motherboard is
> not faulty. I don't know if it has to do with the particular keyboard (A
> Microsoft conspiracy to bring the CTRL-ALT-DEL equivalent to FreeBSD ?
> :) ) but was wondering if anyone else has had a similar problem (or is
> brave enough to try...). I should also note that after pressing
> CTRL-ALT-SPACE the green power led of the machine started blinking (like
> sometimes motherboards do when entering standby or something, only there
> is no option for this in BIOS). Motherboard is a cheap but brand new
> ASROCK 478-based P4 motherboard.
>
>
> Thanks
> Manolis

It's a BIOS feature known by man names including: Sleep state S3,
Standby or Suspend to RAM. It is not a flaw, (arguably), and it's not
specific to any particular kind of keyboard interface. You should be
able to disable it in your BIOS's setup program. For example under my
BIOS I would go:

APCI >> ACPI Suspend Type >> (set from 's1&s3' to 's1')
	
Now when I press ctrl+alt+space I get the following message:
"acpi0: Sleep state S3 is not supported by BIOS."

There are probably other was of disabling it as well.
-Modulok-