On Sun, Nov 11, 2007 at 07:00:13PM -0800, Jesse Peterson wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I've had for a while a USB keyboard that I've been using with NetBSD
> 3.1/amd64. Only recently however did I get around to actually
> physically unplugging my old PS/2 keyboard. After the next restart of
> NetBSD was crashing when XFree86 started. I tried to get a backtrace
> of the panics without much luck.
> 
> After many hours of debugging what could be the cause I realized that
> I had recently unplugged the PS/2 keyboard. Upon plugging it back in
> and restarting everything was fine - X11 started just as it did.
> 
> On a related note I tried to test NetBSD 4.0_RC4/amd64 in an attempt
> to find the cause (to no avail) and upon realizing the PS/2 keyboard
> issue I plugged it in while the system was running. Plugging in the
> keyboard caused a kernel panic instantly.
> 
> Is this a known issue? Perhaps something specific to my hardware? I
> might be able to help debug if anybody has some ideas. I'd like to be
> able to just use my USB keyboard without having a PS/2 keyboard also
> plugged in.
> 

How do you start X.  Is it with a display manager or do you log into a
terminal and run startx?

If you can, get it set so that you use startx.  This ensures that wscons
works and that the keyboard works.  I'm assuming that your X config
points to the wscons device.

Also, have a look in the BIOS for some USB/legacy settings.

Never having owned a USB keyboard, this is just some ideas.  

Good luck.

Doug.