Unable to utilize keyboard on Blade 100 and 150

I'm assigning to Fabio just to call to his attention. Please reassign as necessary.

Voyager,

Are you getting these error messages like me?
FATAL: Module usbkbd not found.
FATAL: Module usbhid not found.
FATAL: Module usbserial not found.

I also found this person with the same complaint:
http://drwetter.org/coolthreads/t2000.Ubuntu_vs_Solaris10_1.html

In my case, I'm trying Feisty Fawn beta on a Sun Blade 150. I've upgraded OBP to the latest version. As reported by Voyager, the installer loads but because of those usb errors, the keyboard doesn't work at all.

Please let me know what additional information I can provide.

Thanks!

Thank you for your input! I really appreciate you trying this out!

I do see several messages flash by, but they pass so fast that I can't tell what they say so I think these could be what I see but I'm not sure how to slow things up long enough to verify it. I'm admittedly a bit of a newbie at these Blades and Linux , so if there is a way I can slow things down or pause things to verify these are the messages I am seeing please let me know how I might be able to do so and I'd be happy to.

As with your system I do have the latest OBP loaded on mine. I had to update mine to even run Ubuntu 6.06 becasue when I got this blade it still appeared to have the original OBP version loaded on it. It was in dire need of the update. :-)

Thank you again for the input and please let me know as well if I can provide any additional information.

Voyager,

Here's what I did to be able to read the error messages: I recorded it with my camera phone. You're right, it goes too fast.

However, I suspect there's more to this problem than that. Following your description, I got to install Ubuntu 6.06.1 on my Sun Blade 150. And I get the same error messages (fatal errors with the usb modules). Despite that, the installer runs just fine. So I don't know what exactly causes the keyboard problem on Feisty.

I wonder if a dist-upgrade would work...

By the way, I had a thread on ubuntuforums:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=402929

It looks like we're in the same boat. Let's wait for a maintainer/developer's opinion.

Of course, I couldn't resist the temptation and went ahead with a dist-upgrade. Things went relatively smoothly. I will report the issues on ubuntuforums to avoid going off-topic here.

Related to our problem, the new kernel boots but the keyboard doesn't work again. Fortunately, I have sshd running, so I can still use the system from another computer.

This might be good for debugging, because now I can gather information that we couldn't with the installation disc. Any ideas are appreciated.

Cool trick with the camera phone! That was a great idea!

Agreed, we'll wait and see what the dev's find/report.

Thank you again for the additional work on this. I'm sure they'll get us fixed up soon...they always do. :-)

Hi guys,

the problem with edgy is a known kernel bug that freezes the machine. The fix has been pushed to updates, but we need a new installer to grab the fix and make edgy installable on those system again.

Use feisty for now.. it will be out in 10 days anyway.

Regarding the keyboard/USB message.. i will need a full dmesg from one of you.

Fabio

Fabio,

Thanks for the attention, it's really appreciated.
Unfortunately, the Feisty installer isn't working either. So it's hard to get debugging information.

When I dist-upgraded from Dapper, the keyboard was still not working. HOWEVER, after a second reboot it started to work. I don't know what happened, but the things I remember doing (through SSH) were:
1. dpkg-reconfigure console-setup (switched from Sun Type 5 to PC 104 keys)
2. depmod and update-initramfs

Unfortunately because of all this, I don't think my dmesg will be very helpful. I tried to read old copies to find one in which I still had the problem, but everything seems to be fine. I'll attach one anyway.

If there's a way of getting information from the installer without keyboard, let me know and I'll boot from it.

Line 623 shows the first time I booted the Feisty kernel, after upgrading from Dapper.

Unfortunately, I fail to see any problem with keyboard or USB throughout. I do remember the keyboard was not working. Pressing caps lock or num lock had no effect.

I hope you can spot something. Let me know if there's other information that might be helpful.

I suspect I attached my desktop's dmesg in the first post -- I'm doing things remotely. Please ignore that one. Here's the real dmesg.

The kern.log file is correct, though.

Thank you for getting the logs posted so quickly Paul. Hopefully your logs will help Fabio determine the issue. If they don't for any reason though please let me know how I can assist and I'll try my install again and see if I can create and retrieve any logs needed off of my system. I may need a little assistance along the way, but I'm more than happy to assist if I can.

Thank you both again!

ok guys,, i see a bunch of problems here.. let's track down one at a time..

first of all i need somebody to boot their machine, using the very latest feisty installer (doesn't matter if it netboot or CD)
and plug in a console cable to the machine.

boot the installer.. check the keyboard.. if it doesn't work, use the console go to the shell and grab the list of modules that are loaded.
This should include also usb stuff.

Fabio

After more checking.. it seems the problem with USB keyboard affects only CD and it's pending upload. Please test instead with a netboot image and let me know.

Fabio

Found also the other problem in console-setup that defaults to Sun Type that is wrong.. filing a separate bug for it.

Fabio

Colin you already fixed this in your tree. waiting upload for d-i and iso image rebuild.

For all the others the console-setup bug is #105595 that will be fixed post-feisty. We will make a release note about it.

Fabio

Good afternoon Fabio.

Thank you for all the information you posted today, my apologies for the delayed response. So, I'm trying to follow all of your updates and it seems like we have everything figured out, but I wanted to confirm whether I was misunderstanding or not. Is there still a need for Paul or I to net boot a system to get you the info you need? Sounds like we do not need to do that and that the issues have been figured out, but I just don't want to leave any part of this issue open.

Thank you.

Travis

Hi Voyager,

it would still be useful for me to know if netboot will recognize the keyboard.

Thanks
Fabio

Thank you Fabio.

I'll work on this as soon as possible (weather permitting, we've had some significant lightening here today and I don't want to kill my little blade) :-) and get you results as soon as I am able to.

Thank you as always.

Good day again!

You'll forgive my newbie excitement, but I just worked through the netboot process and it worked like a charm. With the netboot I was able to successfully boot the system and once it was booted the keyboard worked. I did not complete the install, just confirmed it worked on the language selection screen where it was haning up on the CD boot, but from the netboot it worked great. Doing the netboot install is very cool. Being pretty new to Linux and the Blades it was very cool to see it work.

I hope this answers the correct question. If not or if additional information is needed please feel free to let me know and I'll provide any additional information I can.

Thank you again!

debian-installer (20061102ubuntu24) feisty; urgency=low

  * Add input-modules to sparc cdrom images (LP: #99790).

 -- Colin Watson <email address hidden> Thu, 12 Apr 2007 20:15:54 +0100