[NTLUG:Discuss] Keyboard beeps with SuSE 9.1

[Kevin Brannen]

Steve Baker wrote:

> Kevin Brannen wrote:
>
>> This has been an interesting thread to follow, especially since I'm 
>> not experiencing it. :-)
>
>
> Yeah - I could see how that would be more fun!


:-)

> That is truly bizarre behavior!  Since it happens with different video 
> card drivers, that makes it sound like it's actually in the keyboard 
> routines.  So the bug is probably somewhere down in libX11.*.  It 
> would be fun to know if you have this same problem with 9.2...
>
> The other guy who posted here with the same problem is indeed running
> SuSE 9.2.


Oh, I was going by the version in the subject and didn't remember he had 
9.2. :-(  But since you had an nVidia, and he had a Matrox (or was it an 
ATI?), it seems reasonable to say it's not the video driver but 
something in X itself.

> ...since that's the new Xorg code instead of the XFree86 code.  Not 
> that I believe the Xorg code is really any better at this point in 
> time, but it's differentness might be useful to you.  Any chance of 
> upgrading soon?
>
> Well, at some point I'd like to actually get some work done - and 
> continually
> upgrading stuff definitely isn't conducive to that!


:-)

> The 'beep' I get when I hit the keys (after it's locked up) sounds 
> exactly
> like the beep you get if you type more than a handful of characters while
> your BIOS is starting to boot the PC.  I believe that comes about because
> the keyboard interrupt isn't being serviced so eventually, the keyboard
> UART's short hardware buffer fills up - and somehow that causes a beep.
>
> This makes me suspect that something is shutting out the keyboard
> interrupt or something.


Maybe something is not draining the UART?  I know this is a total guess, 
but it still sounds like a low-level X bug to me.

> Part of me wants to blame this on the framebuffer code...
>
> Sorry - I'm not with you.  'framebuffer code' ??
>
>> ...and advise you not to use it since that code seems to cause random 
>> grief, but I can't see how it would be affecting the keyboard.  
>> Still, if you got time to try it, reboot and put "vga=normal" in your 
>> boot line and see if the problem comes back.
>

Yeh, the code that gives you a textual framebuffer and other various 
modes, unless you already have it turned off (see my comment above on 
how).  Google points me to 
http://wiki.linuxquestions.org/wiki/Framebuffer if you want more info.  
If when you boot, the main console (or VT1) comes up in anything greater 
than 80x25, then it's using the framebuffer code; which Suse generally 
tries to do by default so they can put the cute little penguin on your 
screen while having scrolling text below.  My experience is that it 
generally causes more problems then it gives benefits -- though YMMV.

You haven't run into the framebuffer stuff with your job?  I only ask 
because I know you do a lot of graphic stuff on linux with your job.  Oh 
well, as you said earlier, "so many man pages, so little time." ;-)

Kevin