Cruel and unusual problems with Proliant ML350

[Jeremy Chadwick]

On Mon, Nov 13, 2006 at 05:33:24PM +0100, Oliver Fromme wrote:
> If it's really only a web server, then you probably don't
> need the USB ports.  In that case you should remove ohci
> and ehci from your kernel.  The USB interrupt handler is
> quite heavy-weight, so it can have a noticeable impact if
> the interrupt is shared with other devices.

I'll agree with this (re: webservers not needing USB), except in
regards to one item: keyboards.

More and more x86 PCs these days are expecting keyboards to be
USB-based.  Yes, PS/2 ports are still present on most (but not all)
motherboards, but eventually that will be phased out.

I like the idea of being able to go to my co-location facility and
plug in a USB keyboard to begin working on a server, and when
finished remove the keyboard and leave.  PS/2 was never intended
to be hot-swappable, and as I'm sure many can attest to, removing
or adding a PS/2 keyboard is generally frowned upon (it works here,
it doesn't work there, etc.).  I've seen some recent commits to the
keyboard code which address being able to plug in a PS/2 keyboard
while the machine is powered on (thus not having to reboot), for
what it's worth.

Summary: ukbd is one reason USB is useful on servers.

-- 
| Jeremy Chadwick                                 jdc at parodius.com |
| Parodius Networking                        http://www.parodius.com/ |
| UNIX Systems Administrator                   Mountain View, CA, USA |
| Making life hard for others since 1977.               PGP: 4BD6C0CB |