Fedora Users — USB console via KVM switch on FC2

This is my second post on this subject. I got a return from Kevin Wang the first time but was unable to resolve my problem as a result of his return. This will be a long post. I hope that someone will be able to help me resolve the first, and I hope main problem, because I am at my wits end.

I have two servers, one FC1 and the other FC2. FC1 works fine but FC2 is about useless as of now. The two servers are connected to a USB 2 KVM switch which is supposed to furnish console and other facilities to each. I don't use the KVM switch in the normal way because of things I found when bringing up FC1. It is configured like this:

__________ ________ ________ ________

| USB2 | | USB1 | | USB1 | | USB1 |

| CD-ROM | | FDD | | kbd | | mouse |

------------------ --------------- -------------- ----------------

| | | |

___________________________________________

| In In In In |

| |

| Belkin F5U237 USB 2.0 HUB |

| |

| Out |

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

no kbd | no mouse

| | |

____________________________________________

| PS/2 USB PS/2 |

| |

| Aten ACS 1724 USB2.0 KVM Switch |

| |

| USB1 USB2 |

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

| |

______________ ________________

| USB | | USB |

| | | |

| Via 3CM266 | | Via 3CM266 |

| FC1 | | FC2 |

| | | |

| eth0 eth1 | | eth0 |

------------------------- ----------------------------

| |

____________________________________________

| |

| IP switch |

| |

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

_______________________

| |

| XP client |

| |

| Cygwin |

-----------------------------------------

The server console mouse is a Microsoft Wheel Mouse Optical. The console keyboard is a Solidtek ACK-600H. The USB controllers down on the two motherboards are Via. They are EHCI and UHCI.

FC2 has been kept up to date religiously with Up2date in hopes that the console would miracuoulously begin to work. That hasen't been the case so far. The last kernel update installed kernel-2.6.8-1.521.i686.rpm as well as the same kernelsource RPM.

FC2 boots directly to the Gnome Desktop. The local greeter is set to graphical mode while the remote greeter is set to standard mode. Security is set to allow root to login remotely and locally with GDM. XDCMP is enabled.

With this setup I can login locally about one time in eight boots because this is the rate at which the console mouse and keyboard are correctly recognized by FC2. However, I seen to always be able to remotely login from the XP client which runs Cygwin. So at least I can login. The remote session works fine until something crashes in FC2. I don't know exactly what crashes. It could be the Gnome Desktop or the X server. Both Nautilus and Mozilla also crash frequently. FC2 will sometimes run for an hour before it crashes. For some reason I think that the crash problem is related to the console problem???

I'm not sure what data to present here to get to the bottom of this problem. I have copied several files including messages, xorg.conf and modprobe.conf. I have also excerpted the results of lsmod and dmesg. Here are the two fairly short ones:

modprobe.conf

alias eth0 via-rhine
alias snd-card-0 snd-via82xx
install snd-via82xx /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install snd-via82xx && /usr/sbin/alsactl restore >/dev/null 2>&1 || :
remove snd-via82xx { /usr/sbin/alsactl store >/dev/null 2>&1 || : ; }; /sbin/modprobe -r --ignore-remove snd-via82xx
alias usb-controller ehci-hcd
alias usb-controller1 uhci-hcd
alias net-pf-10 off
alias keybdev usbkbd
alias mousedev usbmouse

xorg.conf

# XFree86 4 configuration created by pyxf86config

Section "ServerLayout"
      Identifier     "Default Layout"
      Screen      0 "Screen0" 0 0
      InputDevice    "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
      InputDevice    "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
EndSection

Section "Files"

# RgbPath is the location of the RGB database. Note, this is the name of the
# file minus the extension (like ".txt" or ".db"). There is normally
# no need to change the default.
# Multiple FontPath entries are allowed (they are concatenated together)
# By default, Red Hat 6.0 and later now use a font server independent of
# the X server to render fonts.
      RgbPath      "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/rgb"
      FontPath     "unix/:7100"
EndSection

Section "Module"
      Load "dbe"
      Load "extmod"
      Load "fbdevhw"
      Load "glx"
      Load "record"
      Load "freetype"
      Load "type1"
      Load "dri"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"

      Identifier "Keyboard0"
      Driver      "keyboard"
      Option          "XkbModel" "pc105"
      Option          "XkbLayout" "us"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
      Identifier "Mouse0"
      Driver      "mouse"
      Option          "Protocol" "IMPS/2"
      Option          "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
      Option          "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
      Option          "Emulate3Buttons" "yes"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
      Identifier   "Monitor0"
      VendorName   "Monitor Vendor"
      ModelName    "SDM-X53"
      DisplaySize 300      230
      HorizSync    28.0 - 52.0
      VertRefresh 57.0 - 75.0
      Optio! n          "dpms"
EndSection

Section "Device"
      Identifier "Videocard0"
      Driver      "vesa"
      VendorName "Videocard vendor"
      BoardName   "VESA driver (generic)"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
      Identifier "Screen0"
      Device     "Videocard0"
      Monitor    "Monitor0"
      DefaultDepth     24
      SubSection "Display"
            Viewport   0 0
            Depth     24
            Modes    "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
      EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "DRI"
      Group        0
      Mode         0666
EndSection

One thing I have noticed in the output from dmesg is this:

input: USB HID v1.01 Keyboard [ATEN 4Ports USB KVM C] on usb-0000:00:10.3-1.3
input: USB HID v1.00 Mouse [ATE 4Ports USB KVM ] on usb-0000:00:10.3-1.3
usb 1-1.1.1: new low speed USB device using address 6
drivers/usb/input/hid-core.c: ctrl urb status -32 received
input: USB HID v1.00 Keyboard [ USB MINI-Keyboard] on usb-0000:00:10.3 -1.1.1
usb 1-1.1.2: new low speed USB device using address 7
input: USB HID v1.10 Mouse [Microsoft Microsoft 3-Button Mouse with IntelliEye(T M)] on usb-0000:00:10.3-1.1.2
usb 1-1.1.3: new high speed USB device using address 8

It's all very confusing to me. It looks like two different keyboards and mice are found.

If someone would be agreeable to help me on this I would be truly thankful. If you are a USB gun with some free time please let me know what other data to produce.

Sterling Lindsey