[ale] USB Keyboard and GRUB Booting Issues

[Dev Null]

Hi all, I am cross-posting this from linuxquestions

I have a homemade box with the following specs:
512MB memory
600 (or so) MHz AMD Duron processer
A SCSI controller (DPT something)
On it, I have:
7-disc CD changer
some CD-RW burner
ATI Rage 128 Video card
Some Realtek 100 NIC
A Linksys WLAN card
A Promise IDE controller
A 40 GB hard drive, hooked to the mobo's IDE controller, formatted XFS
(used for nothing right now)
A 20 GB hard drive, also hooked to the mobo's IDE controller, also
formatted with XFS, and with a 2 GB swap partition and the rest as
root.
Also, I have two CD drives.
Sorry for the vague details, I don't think that it matters too much
because it was a software change that created this problem in the
first place, but I am happy to provide more details on any aspect of
the system.
I also have a Sun Type 7 USB keyboard (UNIX layout).

I installed openSuSE 11.2 recently. (Around 4 days ago). In my round
of initial configuring, I changed the vga kernel parameter to 0x31B
(1280x1024, 24 bits per pixel). I also deleted the "quiet" option from
the kernel line, and I changed the "splash=quiet" to "splash=verbose".
Finally, I went into the runlevel setup and removed the "splash"
daemon from running on any runlevel, because I thought that this may
be the case to the slow framebuffer that I was experiencing. Finally,
I changed the video parameter for the "Failsafe" entry to "Text mode".
The box worked without a problem until I rebooted it. When I rebooted
it, the BIOS went through fine. The GRUB screen came up. It was
normal, so I thought nothing of it. It booted the standard entry (with
the modifed kernel line as noted above). It booted to a blank screen.
I booted again, and the GRUB screen would not respond to my keyboard
at all. (The BIOS, however, works well with my keyboard). This may
just be the Sun hardware, but when on the grub screen, every button on
the keyboard that I would push (including special and modifier keys)
made the light on the optical mouse go to full power as I pushed it,
and would make the numlock LED flash the same. I went into the BIOS
settings, and changed the parameter "USB Keyboard Support" (which was
disabled for the entire time that I had the box running) to "Enabled",
just for luck. It failed. I tried to remove all power to the computer
(except for the CMOS battery) for a couple minutes, and no dice. I
disconnected the keyboard and I added on a normal PS/2 keyboard. GRUB
responded fine, and I tried to boot from the default entry again, as I
thought that it might be a problem with the keyboard. I saw nothing,
but my Caps Lock and Scroll Lock lights were on. I remember that this
had something to do with a kernel panic. I then tried to boot (with
the PS/2 keyboard) the Failsafe entry. This did not work, but there
was text. I remember vaguely (I will post it later, when I boot up the
system, after I write this) something about "trying to kill the idle
task" and the backtrace included things like "start_i386_kernel".

I booted from the openSuSE 11.2 Network Install CD (the same as I
installed with), and I booted with the "Fix Installed System" (or
something like that) option. Blank screen. I changed the video mode to
"Text only", and I saw the same backtrace/kernel panic as I saw
before.

This sounds to me like a hardware problem. Any ideas? I appreciate anything.


EDIT: This is the error.
It loads the Linux kernel completely, and then it gives me this:
(This is the only part that I can see, some of it has trailed off the screen)

[0.004000] CR2: 000000000000003c
[0.004000] ---[ end trace a7919e7f17c0a725 ]---
[0.004000] Kernel panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill the idle task!
[0.004000] Pid: 0, comm: swapper Tainted: G D 2.6.31.5-0.1-default #1
[0.004000] Call Trace:
[<c08082aa>] try_stack_unwind+0x17a/0x1a0
[<c080706c>] dump_race+0x6c/0x130
[<c0807e58>] show_trace_log_lvl+0x58/0x80
[<c0807ea6>] show_trace+0x26/0x40
[<c0bffa8f>] dump_stack+0x79/0x91
[<c0bffaf4>] panic+0x4d/0x137
[<c0853e4f>] do_exit+0x2df/0x300
[<c0c040e7>] oops_end+0xb7/0x110
[<c082d0b4>] no_context+0xd4/0xf0
[<c082d1e8>] __bad_area_nosemaphore+0x118/0x1e0
[<c082d2cf>] bad_area_nosemaphore+0x1f/0x40
[<c0c05b96>] do_page_fault+0x336/0x3e0
[<c0c03353>] error_code+0x73/0x80
[<c090c8ca>] kmem_cache_create+0xfa/0x500
[<c0ed25f5>] idr_init_cache+0x31/0x49
[<c0eabc14>] start_kernel+0x2b0/0x37b
[<c0eab087>] i386_start_kernel+0x87/0x9f

Thanks in advance.
SOURCE:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-hardware-18/usb-keyboard-and-grub-booting-issues.-782872/
http://tinyurl.com/y8e3479:
http://preview.tinyurl.com/y8e3479