Date: Thu, 13 Oct 2005 19:11:37 -0700 (PDT) From: Rob <spamrefuse@yahoo.com> To: Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog@FreeBSD.org> Cc: FreeBSD questions <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: 2 keyboards, 2 mice, 2 monitors with 1 PC; possible? Message-ID: <20051014021137.32350.qmail@web36207.mail.mud.yahoo.com> In-Reply-To: <20051014010231.GD49168@wantadilla.lemis.com>
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--- Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog@FreeBSD.org> wrote: > On Thursday, 13 October 2005 at 14:21:44 -0700, Rob > wrote: > > > > I'm using 5-Stable right now. > > > > I wonder if FreeBSD allows me to have two > > independent users working > > on the same PC, by using two monitors, two > > keyboards and two mice, > > all connected to a single PC. > > > > xorg supports dual-head, which could be > > a starting point. > > > > But how about the keyboards and mice? > > Should that be one keyboard/mouse pair as PS/2, > > and a second pair as USB? How would that > > be detected and controlled? > > > > Is such a setup supported by the FreeBSD kernel? > > Has someone tried this? > > I've certainly used multiple monitors, multiple mice > and a single > keyboard in a single user environment, and that > works fine. I've also > run multiple X servers on the same machine. X > configuration allows > you to specify which device to use. The only part > I'm hazy about is > how to map the keyboard definition to hardware > devices. Looking at > /dev, however, I see: > > crw------- 1 root wheel 3, 63 Sep 11 15:52 > /dev/kbd0 > crw------- 1 root wheel 3, 31 Sep 11 15:52 > /dev/sysmouse > > I just tried plugging in a USB keyboard and got > this: > > crw------- 1 root wheel 3, 63 Sep 11 15:52 > /dev/kbd0 > crw------- 1 root wheel 3, 195 Sep 11 15:52 > /dev/kbd1 > crw------- 1 root wheel 3, 31 Sep 11 15:52 > /dev/sysmouse > > (yes, the date *must* be wrong). This looks very > promising, but as > long as it was plugged in, X only responded to > /dev/kbd1. When I > disconnected it, /dev/kbd0 responded again. So > possibly there's some > issue with the keyboard mapping. Thanks so much for the helpful response. Sounds good indeed, though I myself have to dig a bit deeper into the technical and configurational aspects of all this. I asked here first, because I wanted to avoid to run against the impossible when I will be trying to understand and actually do these kind of things. When googled on this issue, I got only Linux related sites . The main issue there appears to be that the standard kernel can only handle one single keyboard. A not-so-trivial hack to the Linux kernel is needed for two keyboards.... Does your observation above tell me that the standard FreeBSD kernel (as of 5-Stable) is already capable of handling more than one keyboard? Regards, Rob. __________________________________ Yahoo! Music Unlimited Access over 1 million songs. Try it free. http://music.yahoo.com/unlimited/
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