KVM switch

Forum: Other Help Topics
Topic: KVM switch
started by: Tomlin

Posted by Tomlin on Mar. 30 2006,15:23

I've installed DSL on an old Dell Pentium Pro 200 machine. I also have an Ubuntu 5.10 machine and a windoze 2000 box on my network. I access them through a KVM switch box. Everything was working fine until I decided to go with an optical mouse. I couldn't get ANY combination to work with windoze and Linux until I bought a USB KVM switch.

The windoze and Ubuntu machine work fine, but I needed to add a USB card to the DSL box. When it boots, it says it can't find the keyboard. Farther along in the boot process, it displays:

USB found Managed by hotplug

Mouse is MS Digital Media Pro Keyboard at /dev/input/mice

Once I get the prompt, I can use the keyboard to login, etc., but the mouse doesn't work. Using USBview shows:

USB OHCI Root Hub
hub
Microsoft Digital Media Pro Keyboard

I'm relatively new to Linux - 8 months with Ubuntu, 1 week with DSL.

If I plug an optical mouse into the 2nd USB port on the card, the light comes on when the "USB found" is displayed and USBview "sees" the mouse, but it still doesn't work. Right now I'm using the USB keyboard thru the KVM, but using the old PS/2 mouse plugged into the normal mouse port on the back of the Dell.

Any ideas out there?

TIA,

Tomlin

Posted by desnotes on Mar. 30 2006,17:16

I have had numerous problems getting my KVM switch to play nice with my 6 computers (4 linux, 2 Windows). One thing I did was use an adapter to covert my USB mouse to PS2 and plug it in the KVM. Since you have a USB KVM, this would probably not help, but you might try seeing if a cable is available to convert from USB to PS2 for your Dell box.

At one point I was having problems that I thought were caused by my older server running SUSE 10.0. However, later I learned it was my work IBM laptop with windows XP that was causing issues with the rest of the boxes, so it got unplugged.

good luck,

desNotes

Posted by Tomlin on Mar. 30 2006,21:34

Thanks for your response.

The old KVM box I used had cables with one monitor, one "PS/2" mouse and one "PS/2" keyboard plug on EACH end.

This box's cables are propietary. The end that plugs into the switch has a "monitor" type screw-in plug - that's it. The end that plugs into the computer has the same type of screw-in plug, and ONE USB plug. I just plug it into any available USB port. So, your suggestion won't work as there are not seperate plugs for mouse and keyboard.

Hmmm....

Well....I ran xsetup.sh and chose USB mouse, did a CTRL-ALT-BKSPACE and re-started X and everything works now!!! I thought I'd done that before I posted the original thread. Maybe I left the PS/2 mouse plugged in and it interferred with the USB mouse. The wheel doesn't work, but I can live with that.

I don't know.....but I'm where I wanted to be, so, It's all good!!!

Tomlin