Return to BSD News archive
Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.mel.connect.com.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!paladin.american.edu!europa.chnt.gtegsc.com!news.kreonet.re.kr!overload.lbl.gov!agate!howland.reston.ans.net!newsfeed.internetmci.com!info.ucla.edu!library.ucla.edu!news.ucdavis.edu!boris!fzshenau From: fzshenau@boris.ucdavis.edu (Gregory Shenaut) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc Subject: Re: BSDI booting without a keyboard Date: 22 Dec 1995 00:27:00 GMT Organization: University of California, Davis Lines: 26 Message-ID: <4bcu0k$qej@mark.ucdavis.edu> References: <4bcq9n$n9@news2.ucsd.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: boris.ucdavis.edu X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2] Brian Kantor (brian@nothing.ucsd.edu) wrote: : I have a bunch of BSDI systems that share a keyboard and monitor via a : switchbox. Most of these do not have any serial ports. By putting : -console kbd : into /etc/boot.default, I've been able to get them to boot reliably even : when the keyboard is switched off to another system. : However, once they've done that, switching the keyboard back doesn't : work - it's completely ignored. It appears (in /sys/i386/isa/pccons.c) : that the keyboard gets configured whether it responds or not, so I : don't quite know what's going on here. I once did a similar thing, and found that it was necessary for the keyboard to be *reset* because of switch glitches. What I did was to skip a position on the switch between each position that I used. So if I switched between, say, position 1 and position 3, while the switch was in position 2 the keyboard was powered down; when it gets to position 3, it powered up once again & (almost always) worked, unless I turned the switch selector too fast. There are also fancy switches that look like a keyboard to the computers and which perform the switching using active circuitry, so that the keyboard and computers never "know" that they have been switched--if I have to do this gain, I'll just buy one of these devices. -- Greg Shenaut -- gkshenaut@ucdavis.edu