Lenovo keyboard/mouse problems

odj · 2012-02-28 08:10:20

I'm running Arch as my primary development machine at work on a Lenovo W520, so I tend to only perform full upgrades when I'm ready to fight a few battles. Usually, these are educational, but this one has me stumped.

After a recent upgrade, four problems came up. This post is only about the keyboard/mouse (#2), but to the extent they are related:
1) udev hangs at boot about 50% of the time
2) When boot is successful, the laptop keyboard and mouse are recognized about 25% of the time, but external USB keyboard and mouse always work perfectly
3) does not wake from pm-suspend
4) mei give errors on startup (unable to register watchdog device, and related errors). Blacklisting it eliminates these, but does not alter 1-3

Currently installed packages that might be relevant:
udev-git (20120227-1)
linux (3.2.7-1)

I have not tried downgrading udev (yet). Between it and the kernel, I would have a dependency mess.

Other than mei, no other modules are blacklisted. I am not using hal.

The keyboard always works fine from grub and Arch live cd boot. The problem happens in run level 3, so not an xorg issue.

Part of the problem in solving this is that what I get with each boot is non-deterministic (some sort of module loading race condition??). It is not easy to gather information about the problem.

When the keyboard/mouse are recognized, there are entries that seem to correspond to them in /run/udev/data that are missing when they are not recognized. Nothing is in logs that helps much (at least to me). The problem seems silent or I am not looking in the right places.

My solution for the moment is to boot an average of 8 times (50% * 25%), which is really no solution at all!

Thanks in advance.
/O

David Batson · 2012-02-28 15:03:30

Is this any help?
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ud … gs_at_boot

odj · 2012-02-28 17:48:00

David Batson wrote:

Is this any help?
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ud … gs_at_boot

Unfortunately no. I'm not using LDAP, but in any case my udev groups are all legit.

/O

tomegun · 2012-02-28 18:22:19

You should be able to revert to udev from core with no problems (there has not been any interesting commits to git since 181 was released), then the only differences will be in the packaging (probably none).

The hang on boot could be the infamous firmware loading bug. There is still no satisfactory solution to this, but it might be worth waiting the full two minutes to see if boot continues after the timeout.

odj · 2012-02-28 21:35:12

I was running udev-181-2 before, with exactly the same behavior. The boot never times out. It will sit on udev for hours if I let it!

odj · 2012-03-14 16:33:22

I have a very unsatisfying interim solution: if I mash on the keyboard during boot, udev never deadlocks and the keyboard is always recognized. Not at all elegant, but maybe it provides a clue regarding the root cause.
/O

Jessehk · 2012-03-24 04:38:37

Same issue here, and it's makes the installation completely unusable. Are we sure that blacklisting mei is the correct solution? W520 as well, in case I
t wasn't clear.

Jessehk · 2012-03-24 04:59:53

Got it. Disable Vt-D in the bios. Apparently it's other a bug in the thinkpad bios or a kernel bug. Some people are reporting it fixed in the beta ubuntu release. I'm typing this on my phone. Could you file a bug in the tracker for this?

odj · 2012-03-24 05:18:47

I finally gave up on the keyboard abuse (which was probably only a placebo solution), and downgraded to the following:

linux (3.2.12-1 -> 3.1.5-1)
udev (udev-git -> 181-5)
xorg-server (1.12.0-1 -> 1.11.3-1)
xf86-input-evdev (2.7.0-2 -> 2.6.0-4)
pm-utils (1.4.1-4 -> 1.4.1-3)
nvidia (295.20-3 -> 290.10-1)

My only blacklist is tpm_tis. (Added mei back in -- mei was giving error logs on boot, but I don't think contributed to the udev hang problem)

Boot now works 100% of the time, and pm-suspend is reliable enough to be useful again. I feel like I have my system back!

Quite a few other dependent packages that needed to be removed or downgraded (esp virtualbox), but almost certainly have no relevance to the problem. Hope this works for your W520 -- Good luck!

/O

odj · 2012-03-24 05:23:39

Jessehk wrote:

Got it. Disable Vt-D in the bios. Apparently it's other a bug in the thinkpad bios or a kernel bug. Some people are reporting it fixed in the beta ubuntu release. I'm typing this on my phone. Could you file a bug in the tracker for this?

I never would have thought to do this, since I rely on virtualization for work. Thanks for the report. I'm happy to file a bug report, but I'm reluctant to put my system back to its original state to verify the Vt-D correlation.

Jessehk · 2012-03-24 06:10:52

I'm pretty sure it's a kernel issue based on the googling that I've done. See also http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=n … px=MTAzNzk

Based on that link, you should be able to add the kernel parameter to your bootloader without disabling vt-d in the bios.

odj · 2012-03-24 17:11:05

Looks like there are several bug reports that are probably all related to this. Added this thread in the comments.

I'm going to try to upgrade my system (on a backup image) and see if the Vt-D solution works for me. Will report back...

As an aside, I'm not sure if virtualbox takes advantage of whatever Intel is providing with Vt-D, but seems to run just fine with it off on the 3.1.5 kernel (including using bridged ethernet and drive sharing).

odj · 2012-03-24 18:41:37

odj wrote:

Looks like there are several bug reports that are probably all related to this. Added this thread in the comments.
I'm going to try to upgrade my system (on a backup image) and see if the Vt-D solution works for me. Will report back...
As an aside, I'm not sure if virtualbox takes advantage of whatever Intel is providing with Vt-D, but seems to run just fine with it off on the 3.1.5 kernel (including using bridged ethernet and drive sharing).

After a full upgrade (back to 3.2.12), everything seems to work fine with Vt-D off (including virtual box). Turning Vt-D back on in the BIOS recreates the problem. Thanks for posting your solution!!!!

Arch Linux

#1 2012-02-28 08:10:20

Lenovo keyboard/mouse problems

#2 2012-02-28 15:03:30

Re: Lenovo keyboard/mouse problems

#3 2012-02-28 17:48:00

Re: Lenovo keyboard/mouse problems

#4 2012-02-28 18:22:19

Re: Lenovo keyboard/mouse problems

#5 2012-02-28 21:35:12

Re: Lenovo keyboard/mouse problems

#6 2012-03-14 16:33:22

Re: Lenovo keyboard/mouse problems

#7 2012-03-24 04:38:37

Re: Lenovo keyboard/mouse problems

#8 2012-03-24 04:59:53

Re: Lenovo keyboard/mouse problems

#9 2012-03-24 05:18:47

Re: Lenovo keyboard/mouse problems

#10 2012-03-24 05:23:39

Re: Lenovo keyboard/mouse problems

#11 2012-03-24 06:10:52

Re: Lenovo keyboard/mouse problems

#12 2012-03-24 17:11:05

Re: Lenovo keyboard/mouse problems

#13 2012-03-24 18:41:37

Re: Lenovo keyboard/mouse problems

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