Arch Linux

barefly

Member

Registered: 2014-08-16

Posts: 59

Potential Solutions to Acer Aspire Laptop keyboard not loading in Arch

I recently received another Acer laptop, I currently have an Acer Extensa 7620z that works excellently with Arch, but I am having difficulties getting Arch to recognize a keyboard on the laptop. The model of the laptop in question is an Aspire, unfortunately I cannot provide the model number right now as I am at work and the laptop is at home. I am having a lot of difficulty getting Arch installed on the laptop because the keyboard is not accepting any input when I am dropped to the command line. The strange thing is though when I initially load my live usb, and I am prompted for the environment selection, I am able to select the environment with the keyboard with no issue at all. The problem persists even with a usb keyboard, but incidentally I can select the environment with the usb keyboard when first loading up but it will be unusable once dropped to command line. The same issue occurs in Arch-based distributions like Antergos and Manjaro.

I have been troubleshooting this issue further, and have tried a few other distros, including lubuntu and void linux, in both distributions the keyboard works just fine, usb or built-in. Now I'd prefer not to install lubuntu, as I find the ubuntu base system to be an issue and would rather install debian, which I have yet to test, and xbps is still early and does not have the amount of packages that can be found in pacman or the aur.

Based on my troubleshooting it is possible to get the keyboard working properly in linux, the problem is diagnosing what is loading the keyboard in other distributions and whether or not I can get working with a persistent Arch installation on a usb. So long as I can figure this out I can just copy the image over and work with that. So basically I'm looking for any help in trying to get into the nitty gritty of this, what modules should I be looking at? Do I need to install a specific kernel module, and which one is it? How can I figure it out in the lubuntu or void linux live usb? What are the steps I should be taking to start working on this? I have a solid understanding of the linux command line, and some programming and scripting knowledge, so I don't mind dabbling in some code and making necessary changes. At this point I'd rather get this to work rather than find another laptop that works better, and I figure the best place to turn would be you guys.

Last edited by barefly (2015-07-16 17:20:14)