Keyboard stops working just before login screen

[Stupid Boy]

I just installed Slackware 10.2 in what I think is a completely normal way, a full installation and selecting settings that I would normally select. Regardless of whether I boot from the hard drive or a CD, the keyboard stops working just before the login prompt.

I typed on the keyboard throughout the boot sequence to see when it stops working, and these are the last few things that happen be one of these things that's breaking it. (They're in chronological order.) I have abbreviated the messages because I don't feel like typing the entire messages.

Starting sendmail MTA daemon
Starting sendmail MSP que runner
ALSA warning: No mixer settings found in /etc/asound.state
Loading OSS compatibility modules for ALSA
Loading /usr/share/kbd/keymaps/i386/dvorak/ANSI-dvorak.map.gz
Starting gpm

EDIT: I checked again. I can type (in Dvorak) after "Starting gpm," so something probably happens between that and the login prompt. The rest of this post comes from before I discovered this.

As it's the only keyboard-related thing in the list, the loading of the Dvorak layout is likely to be causing the problem. This seems unlikely as I've always set the ANSI Dvorak keyboard layout in Slackware installations without problems and an error in loading a keymap should not make the old one stop working. Still, it's a possibility. How can I change this without using pkgtool?

Or, do you think something other than loading the Dvorak keyboard could be causing this?

[hlrguy]

Is it a USB keyboard? When my external USB drive was dying, on boot, often, it would cause my usb mouse/keyboard and occasionally the entire hub to die, levaing me with a nice login screen and nothing to do but hard shutdown. If it is USB, you might try unplugging all other USB devices when booting. Also, I remember vaguely that with my old desktop, in the BIOS, something like legacy USB support was active (and I turned it off, or it was off and I turned it on?), and that setting prevented my new USB keyboard from working.

Of course, if not a USB keyboard, then is it booting up to runlevel 5 (X started). You might try stopping it at runlevel 3 (go into failsafe) and then change your /etc/inittab to have the system come up to console level (3) then investigate further?

hlrguy

[je_fro]

I would edit inittab from a liveCD (to stop at runlevel 3) and then find a way to prevent gpm from starting. I think that's your problem.

[Stupid Boy]

Sorry, I forgot to mention that it is a PS/2 keyboard. I read about the problems with USB keyboards that you're discussing.

It's booting to runlevel 3, without X. I suppose I could try runlevel 1.

This guy (http://cellar.org/archive/index.php/t-1748.html) seems to have had the same problem and could only fix it by reinstalling. That said, he doesn't seem to have tried very hard to fix it.

ANOTHER EDIT: I fixed it! Forgetting that I have a usb mouse, I had set the mouse as an imps/2 mouse. I plugged in an imps/2 mouse, and it worked!

[hlrguy]

Very cool. Did it autodetect the usb mouse, but you selected ps/2 manually overriding or it didn't detect it at all? Either way, you might want to post to a slackware message board for the next person who runs into this?

hlrguy