[arch-general] Linux 3.13 status

Thomas Bächler thomas at archlinux.org
Thu Feb 20 14:32:54 EST 2014


Okay, it's been way too long. I don't really have the time to spend much
time on the kernel right now, and neither does Tobias, so it's been
sitting in [testing] for way too long.

I am currently building 3.13.3-2 with a critical NFS fix and I intend to
move that kernel to [core] very soon.

Due to the keyboard changes, I'd like to make the following announcement:


Linux 3.13 WARNING: PS/2 Keyboard support is now modular

It has been requested that we make support for the i8042 keyboard and
mouse controller modular. Some people get weird error messages because
they don't have one and the manual probing slows down their boot. Tom
took care of this on the kernel side (thank you) and the result finally
landed in 3.13.

In order to get keyboard input during early init, if you don't have it
already, add the `keyboard` hook to the `HOOKS=` line in
`/etc/mkinitcpio.conf`. It has been in the default configuration for
some time.

**WARNING**: There's a downside to all this: On some motherboards
(mostly ancient ones, but also a few new ones), the i8042 controller
cannot be automatically detected. It's rare, but some people will surely
be without keyboard. You can detect this situation in advance:

    $ dmesg -t | grep ^i8042
    i8042: PNP: No PS/2 controller found. Probing ports directly.

If you have a PS/2 port and get this message, add `atkbd` to the
`MODULES=` line in `mkinitcpio.conf` and run `mkinitcpio -P`. If you
just noticed that you are without keyboard after rebooting, fear not!
Simply add

    earlymodules=atkbd modules-load=atkbd

to your kernel command line in your bootloader.

I apologize for any inconvenience this transition may cause.

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