No keyboard after ports update, 2x moused_enable="YES" culprit

Polytropon freebsd at edvax.de
Sun May 15 08:36:50 UTC 2011


Please allow me a technical sidenote:

On Sat, 14 May 2011 20:53:27 -0700 (PDT), Rob Clark <rpclark at ymail.com> wrote:
> Trying the obvious first, I unplugged the keyboard and plugged it
> back in the ps2 port, and keyboard worked immediately -- this
> was repeatable.  

Do _NOT_ hotplug the PS/2 port! It's not capable of that!

I've seen myself in the past that trying so caused a mainboard
to fly into the garbage can - as hotplugging the keyboard
seemed to have damaged the PS/2 port (it didn't work anymore,
with no keyboard).

However, you actually CAN do this with USB. And I've done
hotplugging with an old AT ("big" 5 pin keyboard connector)
and HIL connect/disconnect at the keyboard (!) without any
problem (IBM model M, the famous one).



> Some digging around revealed that I had the following
> line in /etc/rc.conf twice:
> moused_enable="YES"

This doesn't matter: /etc/rc.conf is a shell script included
in system scripts that does just contain variables that are
set. Compare the following:

	x = 3;
	x = 3;

What does happen? Or even this:

	x = 3;
	x = 4;

You can have the same line 100 times in this file, with the
result that the _last_ setting will be used. See "man rc.conf"
for details.



> I removed one of these (which I guess was the culprit) and left
> one as it should have been, then all was well. 

So _that_ is very strange, if one has the functionality of
/etc/rc, rc.conf, and the rc.d/ scripts in mind... having
a line twice in the config file does _not_ imply a service
is started twice.



> I have no idea why I had  moused_enable="YES"  in there twice,
> whether it was from an old or recent rc.conf edit, but it
> clearly seems to have been causing the issue.

Coincidence, covariation, correlation...? :-)



> Other (maybe valuable) info:
> I am running hald in /etc/rc.conf as follows:
> dbus_enable="YES"
> hald_enable="YES"
> ...and these were there prior to the ports update.
> 
> I figured this "issue" may be of some value since I did not
> do any src updates.

While moused is part of the base system (updated per source
or freebsd-update), dbus and hal are ports (job for portmaster).





-- 
Polytropon
Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...


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