PS2 Keyboard not working after kernel update [solved]

Stolz · Last edited by Stolz on Mon Feb 24, 2014 11:12 am; edited 1 time in total

I've upgraded a server (no X) from gentoo-sources-3.6.11 to gentoo-sources-3.10.25 and now the PS/2 keyboard is not working. The keyboard works both in BIOS and Grub, but as soon as the kernel boots it stops working.

The kernel seems totally unaware of the keyboard

genterminl · Posted: Sun Feb 23, 2014 12:30 am Post subject:

I believe something related to the PS2 input has moved to something you now need to explicitly enable. I don't remember the details (it doesn't affect my system) but I saw it mentioned on the Arch Linux announce list - see their site. Maybe it will help you figure out if there is some other kernel option you also need to set.

TomWij · Retired Dev Joined: 04 Jul 2012 Posts: 1553

Do you still have both configs around? If so, you can take a difference between them like `diff -u file1 file2` and see whether there is a relevant option that has changed state.

genterminl · Posted: Sun Feb 23, 2014 1:21 am Post subject:

And even if you don't have the .config file, as long as you can still boot to that kernel, you can (assuming you set the appropriate kernel parameters in the first place) get it from /proc/config.gz.

Stolz · Posted: Mon Feb 24, 2014 11:12 am Post subject:

Thanks all for the answers. I fixed it. genterminl comments helped although was not the problem listed in the Arch Linux site it made me try a different approach.

Changing CONFIG_HID_GENERIC from [m] to [y] fixed the problem. I thought PS/2 devices don't use HID at all but seems I was wrong. For those finding this post in the future, the exact kernel option is located at

genterminl · Posted: Mon Feb 24, 2014 2:19 pm Post subject:

It's great you got it fixed - but I had thought changing something from module to built in should only be necessary for things needed before the kernel can manage to load the module, such as the code for the file system of the root partition. I wonder if there is some configuration item missing which would have loaded the module earlier. (Unfortunately, you obviously couldn't just type "modprobe whatever" if the keyboard isn't working yet...)