Arch Linux

sjdh

Member

Registered: 2013-09-19

Posts: 22

[SOLVED] no mouse or keyboard in GDM and GNOME

Hello,

In GDM and GNOME no mous pointer apears and keyboard does not respond. even CRT-ALT-BACKSPACE does nothing.

This is how I messed it up:
Before a system update, pacman gave a warning
error: failed to commit transaction (conflicting files)
filesystem: /bin exists in filesystem
I ignored it, and forced pacman to proceed.
After a system update my system would not boot.

This is what I tried to fix it
1. From a installation medium I followed the step of this post
https://www.archlinux.org/news/binaries … ervention/
2. Then boot was each time terminated because the EFI partition /boot/EFI could not be mounted. Reason:
FAT-fs (md125p1): codepage cp437 not found
3. I removed md125 from fstab
4. Now the system starts GDM with no keyboard or mouse.
5. When I boot to multi user target, keyboard is working  (but after I start gdm from zsh)
6. ls -l /var/log/gdm
only logfile with recent date is :0.log
7.  ls -l /var/log/gdm/:0.log contains one error (EE)
open /dev/dri/card0: No such file or directory
and two warnings (WW)
Falling back to old probe method for modesetting
Falling back to old probe method for fbdef
8. try startx from multi user target
gnome starts, only no mouse and no keyboard
9. The /var/log/Xorg.0.log
contains the same warnings (WW) and error (E)
10. pacman -Q xf86-input-synaptics
xf86-input-synaptics is installed

I have no clue where the problem lies.  Where can I look? Some other log file maybe?

Best regards,
Sjoerd

Edit:
The problem turned out te be not having updated the images on the EFI partion.

Last edited by sjdh (2013-09-20 08:07:41)

DarkCerberus

Banned

From: Holsworthy, Devon

Registered: 2011-12-31

Posts: 252

Re: [SOLVED] no mouse or keyboard in GDM and GNOME

Hi Welcome to the forum, did you read this https://www.archlinux.org/news/update-f … -together/  - and is your motherboard actually UEFI? The problems with gdm may have been caused by you ignoring the filesystem upgrade - and does the output of "mkinitpcio -p linux" display keyboard in the modules?

Last edited by DarkCerberus (2013-09-19 15:59:29)

---

Our enemies are your enemies, Nick. Disorder, war. It's just a matter of time before a dirty bomb goes off in Moscow, or an EMP fries Chicago.  ---  Alexander Pierce, Captain America: Winter Soldier
Access Denied! De-cryption failed, override denied all files sealed! --- Triskelion, Shield OS
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How to ask questions the smart way

karol

Archivist

Registered: 2009-05-06

Posts: 25,440

Re: [SOLVED] no mouse or keyboard in GDM and GNOME

I think the easiest, probably the fastest and definitely the most reliable way to get out of this mess is to reinstall Arch - and keep it updated.

Last edited by karol (2013-09-19 16:04:03)

sjdh

Member

Registered: 2013-09-19

Posts: 22

Re: [SOLVED] no mouse or keyboard in GDM and GNOME

Hi, thanks. I read https://www.archlinux.org/news/update-f … -together/ and I did a complete update with pacman -Syu

My motherboard is UEFI.
mkinitpcio -p linux
==> WARNING: Hook 'usbinput' is deprecated. Replace it with 'keyboard' in your config
-> Running build hook: [keyboard]

After that I replaced 'usbinput' with 'keyboard' in /etc/mkinitpcio.conf and the warning diappears. Still no mouse or keyboard when running gdm.

Last edited by sjdh (2013-09-19 19:09:00)

DarkCerberus

Banned

From: Holsworthy, Devon

Registered: 2011-12-31

Posts: 252

Re: [SOLVED] no mouse or keyboard in GDM and GNOME

This bug may or may not be related to this bug report on a different linux-based system https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=816764 - I would also suggest try to update the dconf settings in  /etc/dconf/db/gdm.d/ or something similar.

Change the

[org/gnome/desktop/a11y/keyboard]
enable=true

to 

[org/gnome/desktop/a11y/keyboard]
enable=false

And see if that helps you fix the keyboard issue on gdm - from what I've read it is a known bug on gnome but only been reported on RedHat's bug report site. Please read this comment from the bug report site https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=816764#c42 for further details.

---

Our enemies are your enemies, Nick. Disorder, war. It's just a matter of time before a dirty bomb goes off in Moscow, or an EMP fries Chicago.  ---  Alexander Pierce, Captain America: Winter Soldier
Access Denied! De-cryption failed, override denied all files sealed! --- Triskelion, Shield OS
-----
How to ask questions the smart way

sjdh

Member

Registered: 2013-09-19

Posts: 22

Re: [SOLVED] no mouse or keyboard in GDM and GNOME

It occured to me that the problems with mounting the efi partition must have something to do with the kernel. If there is an issue with the kernel, the mouse and keyboard may also be affected.

I use the latest precompiled kernel, so I expect no problems with mounting when mounting a fat partition
FAT-fs (md125p1): codepage cp437 not found

pacman -Q linux
linux 3.11.1-1

at the same time an older kernel is actually loaded
uname -r
3.9.4-1-ARCH

It turns out that I didn't update the kernel images on the EFI partition.
After updating it, fat can be mounted and mouse and keyboard are working in gdm

DarkCerberus, thanks for your help.