atkbd: changing flags at boot time

[Brian Candler]

[This is with FreeBSD 4.11-RELEASE]

I would like to arrange that the ATA keyboard works even if the machine is 
booted without a keyboard, but one is subsequently plugged in. My 
understanding is that the default behaviour of probing for the keyboard is 
set here in the kernel configuration:

device          atkbd0  at atkbdc? irq 1 flags 0x1
                                               ^^^
# `flags' for atkbd:
#       0x01    Force detection of keyboard, else we always assume a keyboard

So I tried putting
   hint.atkbd.0.flags="0x00"
in /boot/loader.conf, but that didn't make any difference.

Looking at sys/dev/kbd/atkbd.c, I see:

        /* XXX: a kludge to obtain the device configuration flags */
        if (resource_int_value("atkbd", ATKBD_DEFAULT, "flags", &i) == 0)
                flags |= i;

Does this mean that it's impossible to clear this flag without recompiling the 
kernel? If so, is there a reason for this?

TIA,

Brian.