Kernel problems with HP ze4145

Kernel problems with HP ze4145

[Virgil]

Hello,

This particular laptop has an Athlon XP1800 mobile 
processor with an ALI USB 1.1 controller. It uses a 
synaptics PS/2 touchpad. In the following I'll try to best 
describe the problem I have.

Kernel versions covered: 2.4.19 - 2.4.21pre6 patched with 
acpi-patch. Distribution: none (LFS 4.0)

1) I compiled the kernel with usb support built-in (not as 
modules). Upon booting and entering the login prompt, the 
keyboard is blocked (i.e. I can't write anything with it). 
If I press the power button, the computer enters runlevel 
6 (so it is not frozen) and powers off.

2) Recompile the kernel with usb as modules (usbcore and 
usb-ohci) and do a script in /etc/rc.d/init.d/ to load the 
modules at boot time. Symptoms stay as above.

3) Remove the script from /etc/rc.d/rc3.d (e.g.). Boot. 
Login as root. The keyboard works (yee!). Do cat 
/dev/mouse. Keyboard no longer works (all three LEDs light 
up). Reboot.

4) Do step 3 above but don't cat the mouse anymore. 
Instead do modprobe usbcore and modprobe usb-ohci. The 
keyboard is NOT blocked. Do cat /dev/mouse. The mouse 
works (yee). Do mount -t usbdevfs none /proc/bus/usb. The 
USB filesystem is initialised and the USB works 
beautifully (tested with a digital camera and a scanner).

So, does any1 have a similar problem and a real solution 
on this thing? Do I do something wrong? Is this a kernel 
bug?

Virgil
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Re: Kernel problems with HP ze4145

[Virgil]

Patrick,

> is there anything interessting in /var/log/* ?
No, there's absolutely nothing interesting in both 
kern.log and sys.log.

I did ln -sf ../init.d/usb-init S45usb in /etc/rc.d/rc3.d 
so that the modules would be loaded automatically at 
startup.

My /etc/rc.d/init.d/usb-init script
#!/bin/bash
#Begin /etc/rc.d/init.d/usb-init

source /etc/sysconfig/rc
source $rc_functions

case "$1" in
       start)
                echo "Initialising USB..."
                modprobe usbcore
                modprobe usb-ohci
                evaluate_retval
                ;;
       stop)
                echo "Unloading USB..."
                rmmod usb-ohci
                rmmod usbcore
                evaluate_retval
                ;;
       restart)
                $0 stop
                sleep 1
                $0 start
                ;;
       status)
                lsmod | grep usb-ohci
                evaluate_retval
                ;;
       *)
                echo "Usage: $0 
{start|stop|restart|status}"
                exit 1
                ;;
esac
# End /etc/rc.d/init.d/usb-init

---------- Excerpt from kern.log --------------
usb.c: registered new driver usbdevfs
usb.c: registered new driver hub
usb-ohci.c: USB OHCI at membase 0xe08cb00, IRQ 9
usb-ohci.c: usb-00:02.0, Acer Laboratories Inc. [ALi] USB 
1.1 Controller
usb.c: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 1
hub.c: USB hub found
hub.c: 4 ports detected
(At this point the keyboard does not work, so I pressed 
the power button)
Kernel logging (proc) stopped
Kernel log daemon terminating
---------- end kern.log -----------------------

Exactly the above messages appear if I manually do the 
modprobe, except this time the keyboard no longer locks.

So, at this point I'm really out of ideas. Does anyone 
think posting my problem on linux-kernel would yield 
anything?

Virgil
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