[syslinux] USB keyboard problem

[Nazo]

On 3/16/06, Ricardo Santos <rs at isctem.ac.mz> wrote:
> Sorry. I made a mistake with the version.
>
> But there is something strange. Does menu.c32 work with USB keyboards?
>
> Ricardo
>
> On Thu, 2006-03-16 at 09:05 -0800, H. Peter Anvin wrote:
> > Ricardo Santos wrote:
> > > When using the latest pxelinux my usb keyboard doesn't work (within the
> > > menu).
> > >
> > > If I use the pxelinux build 074 the keyboard works (without menu), but
> > > this version doesn't recognize the default menu.c32 directive.
> >
> > There is no such thing as "pxelinux build 074".
> >
> >       -hpa
>
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In theory, menu.c32 doesn't know USB from PS/2 or even the old
standard (was it called just AT?  I don't recall.)  One would think
that it shouldn't be possible for this particular issue to occur at
all actually.  If you don't mind my hazarding a guess, I would suppose
that it's resetting and assigning certain hardware components to allow
for usage of the network and USB doesn't get properly assigned in this
process.  One thing I'd recommend you check is to see if your BIOS has
an option which says something to the effect of "USB Legacy Support"
or it may just be two options "USB Mouse" and "USB Keyboard." 
Enabling these should, in theory, allow things that don't actually use
USB to access your keyboard and mouse (I say mouse because I think
some have only "USB Mouse" which doubles to also do legacy keyboard as
well as mouse, so if you have both, I'd turn them both on to be on the
safe side.)  I've been using a USB keyboard hooked directly to USB
instead of with a PS/2 adaptor for quite a while now, and I haven't
had any troubles which may or may not be related to the fact that I've
been using legacy input device support since even before I had a USB
keyboard (I wanted to try to be relatively sure that when I got one it
would cause a minimal fuss to switch over.)  Then again, I'll be
honest, I don't use PXELinux since I'm in a home environment and
having to run a server all the time would be troublesome.