On Thu, May 25, 2000 at 10:54:48AM -0600, Brook Milligan wrote:
> I want to run a machine without a keyboard.  Apparently the only way
> to do this is to disable the keyboard test in the BIOS and compile a
> kernel with no keyboard support.

I don't think you need to remove keyboard support from kernel.
I've several machines which are behind a keyboard/mouse/display
switch (it's really a 3 circuits, 4 positions switch, nothing more) and
they boot fine even when the switch isn't in the rigth position.

> 
> When I try to halt the machine, however, it actually reboots instead.
> Presumably, this is because in the absence of a keyboard control falls
> through the console poll/get sequence (rather than waiting for input)
> which is taken from src/sys/arch/i386/i386/machdep.c (presumably
> similar fragments exist for other archs):
> 
> 	if (howto & RB_HALT) {
> 		printf("\n");
> 		printf("The operating system has halted.\n");
> 		printf("Please press any key to reboot.\n\n");
> 		cnpollc(1);	/* for proper keyboard command handling */
> 		cngetc();
> 		cnpollc(0);
> 	}
> 
> 	printf("rebooting...\n");
> 
> How could this be changed so that the machine will really halt under
> these conditions?  Or is this an ill-conceived case?

Maybe what you really need is a serial console ?

--
Manuel Bouyer <bouyer@antioche.eu.org>
--