Arch Linux

Texbrew

Member

From: The Lone Star State

Registered: 2016-02-09

Posts: 580

[Solved] Ps/2 Keyboard & Mouse Stopped Working After System Upgrade

Posting to provide help to others.

After last night's full upgrade, my ancient ps/2 keyboard & mouse stopped dead. When Arch was first installed on this machine, ps/2 keyboard & mouse didn't work out of the box, but I found the answer here https://www.archlinux.org/news/linux-31 … w-modular/ and a simple edit to /etc/mkinitcpio.conf fixed it:

MODULES="atkbd"
# mkinitcpio -p linux

After the upgrade, that line is still in the .conf file, but no keyboard & mouse. After much googling, wailing, and gnashing of teeth, here's what fixed it for me

# modprobe psmouse
# modprobe i8042

followed by an edit to /etc/mkinitcpio.conf adding two modules

MODULES="psmouse"
MODULES="i8042"
# mkinitcpio -p linux

Here are the relevant lines in the lsmod list that changed after modprobe commands were done.

From this

Module                  Size  Used by
atkbd                  24576  0
libps2                 16384  1 atkbd
serio                  20480  1 atkbd

to this

Module                  Size  Used by
atkbd                  24576  0
libps2                 16384  2 atkbd,psmouse
serio                  20480  6 serio_raw,atkbd,i8042,psmouse

I spent a ridiculous amount of time on this, but I wanted to unravel the kinks before upgrading two other machines. Hope it helps those other two people left in the world who are still using an ancient mouse and keyboard.

tex

Edit: Include steps taken before upgrading one other Arch box.

This may be a no-brainer for some, before upgrading the next out-of-date machine, I added modules to its /etc/mkinitcpio.conf

MODULES="psmouse"
MODULES="i8042"

followed by

# mkinitcpio -p linux

and the upgrade went without a hitch. Keyboard & mouse work fine. Only one more upgrade to go, woohoo!

I know we're supposed to upgrade regularly, but these old machines are not often used.
Even this newbie can learn a lesson now and then...

Last edited by Texbrew (2016-10-16 22:14:10)