Bad experience switching to SSD on FreeBSD 10.3

[Manish Jain]

Hi,

I have a rather bad experience switching to SSD on FreeBSD 10.3 amd64. Things would have been much worse had the SSD switch not worked for my other OS - Windows XP, a bit surprising because XP does not support SSD TRIM.

For my upgrade, there were 3 components which I upgraded simultaneously :

1) Keyboard -> LED backlit keyboard (Cooler Master Devastator, USB)
2) 2 GB DDR3 RAM -> 8GB DDR3 (G Skill)
3) Sata HD -> SSD (Samsung EVO 500 GB)

The keyboard upgrade itself failed for FreeBSD. The moment I switch on the LED backlight light for the keys, console output freezes till I turn off the backlight. This is surprising because the keyboard works well on XP, which was developed almost 2 decades back. The reason this is important for me is because I love working in the dark, with no bright lights around. LED keyboards make that possible. Not just that, the keyboard looks sensational - particularly with LED on, when the thing looks futuristic.

So I resigned myself to working without the LED. Upon installation of FreeBSD and Gnome3, the desktop started crashing. I suspected the RAM to be defective and reinstalled the whole OS with the RAM switched to the original 2 GB - which was working flawlessly on previous FreeBSD 10.2 installation. Upon reinstall, things were much better, but then Gnome Tweak Tool just does not work. This makes it impossible to get the Applications menu and the Window list, which I find absolutely essential. There is no way I can work the Activities system that Gnome ships with as default. Hotspot makes things much worse, although I think there is an extension that disable hotspot. But first I have to get the Activities menu and the Window List, without which I just can't use Gnome. If I can't get Gnome to work for me, FreeBSD itself becomes useless as a desktop OS.

So I crapped the FreeBSD installation and switched to Windows XP + Cygwin. On XP, the whole thing works fantastically. My system is much faster, roughly 3 times compared to when I had the SATA HD. Now I am stuck with Windows XP, when the entire upgrade had targeted removal of XP and FreeBSD as the only OS. The LED keyboard situation is unwarranted - FreeBSD should by now be having support for USB LED keyboard. The Gnome situation is an equal concern. FreeBSD is famous for making sensible choices. The Gnome developers have screwed up the desktop environment with rotten user interface choices, and the thing now needs to be fixed with extensions and tweak tools. This leads directly to inavailability of FreeBSD for me for the time being. I was prepared to go without the keyboard - I could have tried passing the USB commands to Widows XP hosted under VirtualBox. That might have been possible, although I am not sure it would have worked. But the additional Gnome problem leads me to revert
to XP as the only OS for the time being. Hopefully things will be fixed with FreeBSD 11.0. Luckily for me, I used MBR partitioning when initializing the SSD - against the advice from this forum. Because of that, I was able to try out XP, rather than having to roll back the whole upgrade.

I hope developers at FreeBSD and Gnome become aware of my experience - I dearly wish things will be fixed ASAP.

Thank you.
Manish Jain

[Dean E. Weimer]

On 2016-06-24 3:24 pm, Manish Jain wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I have a rather bad experience switching to SSD on FreeBSD 10.3 amd64.
> Things would have been much worse had the SSD switch not worked for my
> other OS - Windows XP, a bit surprising because XP does not support
> SSD TRIM.
>
> For my upgrade, there were 3 components which I upgraded simultaneously
> :
>
> 1) Keyboard -> LED backlit keyboard (Cooler Master Devastator, USB)
> 2) 2 GB DDR3 RAM -> 8GB DDR3 (G Skill)
> 3) Sata HD -> SSD (Samsung EVO 500 GB)
>
> The keyboard upgrade itself failed for FreeBSD. The moment I switch on
> the LED backlight light for the keys, console output freezes till I
> turn off the backlight. This is surprising because the keyboard works
> well on XP, which was developed almost 2 decades back. The reason this
> is important for me is because I love working in the dark, with no
> bright lights around. LED keyboards make that possible. Not just that,
> the keyboard looks sensational - particularly with LED on, when the
> thing looks futuristic.

Cooler Master Devastator is a poorly designed LED keyboard for using on
FreeBSD/Linux, I did a quick search because I was surprised it wouldn't
work.

The scroll lock key turns on/off the back light, so your console is
freezing because its doing exactly what you told it to do when pressing
the scroll lock button. Its not an issue with FreeBSD not supporting the
LED backlit keyboard, just that they chose a poor key to link the on/off
feature of the LED to when using the keyboard on FreeBSD/Linux. You may
be able to work around it by using scroll lock prior to FreeBSD starting
to boot and hopefully it will stay on.

Someone else might have a better idea for a work around on this.

--
Thanks,
Dean E. Weimer
http://www.dweimer.net/

[Polytropon]

On Fri, 24 Jun 2016 15:58:12 -0500, Dean E. Weimer wrote:
> On 2016-06-24 3:24 pm, Manish Jain wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > I have a rather bad experience switching to SSD on FreeBSD 10.3 amd64.
> > Things would have been much worse had the SSD switch not worked for my
> > other OS - Windows XP, a bit surprising because XP does not support
> > SSD TRIM.
> >
> > For my upgrade, there were 3 components which I upgraded simultaneously
> > :
> >
> > 1) Keyboard -> LED backlit keyboard (Cooler Master Devastator, USB)
> > 2) 2 GB DDR3 RAM -> 8GB DDR3 (G Skill)
> > 3) Sata HD -> SSD (Samsung EVO 500 GB)
> >
> > The keyboard upgrade itself failed for FreeBSD. The moment I switch on
> > the LED backlight light for the keys, console output freezes till I
> > turn off the backlight. This is surprising because the keyboard works
> > well on XP, which was developed almost 2 decades back. The reason this
> > is important for me is because I love working in the dark, with no
> > bright lights around. LED keyboards make that possible. Not just that,
> > the keyboard looks sensational - particularly with LED on, when the
> > thing looks futuristic.
>
> Cooler Master Devastator is a poorly designed LED keyboard for using on
> FreeBSD/Linux, I did a quick search because I was surprised it wouldn't
> work.
>
> The scroll lock key turns on/off the back light, so your console is
> freezing because its doing exactly what you told it to do when pressing
> the scroll lock button.

Is that for real? Of course nobody in "Windows" land uses the
Scroll Lock key, so the manufacturer maybe thought "Well, lets
just use this key, nobody will notice, because this key actually
doesn't do anything!" ... wow ...

Compare for example the IBM (Lenovo) Thinkpad keyboard where
you can switch on a little LED above the display to "shed light"
on the keyboard. You press Fn+Home (if I remember correctly).
Nothing (!) is output to the keyboard buffer. So you can see:
It is possible to implement a hardware function (light on/off)
without interfering with a software function (scroll lock/unlock).

Also note the "was designed decades ago" - maybe it only works
with decades old "Windows", so don't expect it to work on a
current modern-age operating system. ;-)



> Its not an issue with FreeBSD not supporting the
> LED backlit keyboard, just that they chose a poor key to link the on/off
> feature of the LED to when using the keyboard on FreeBSD/Linux. You may
> be able to work around it by using scroll lock prior to FreeBSD starting
> to boot and hopefully it will stay on.

It's also possible to re-assign the Scroll Lock key code to an
"empty action". On the text mode console, the Pause/Break key
performs the same action as Scroll Lock, so the functionality
is not lost.



> Someone else might have a better idea for a work around on this.

Press Scroll Lock to activate light (console locked), press Pause/Break
to unlock console again. As both keys are next to each other,
develop the routine to press them after each other to toggle the
light. Inside X, Scroll Lock usually has no function assigned,
so it shouldn't be a problem there.



--
Polytropon
Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...

[Martin S. Weber]

On 2016-06-24 23:25:12, Polytropon wrote:
> Is that for real? Of course nobody in "Windows" land uses the
> Scroll Lock key, so the manufacturer maybe thought "Well, lets
> just use this key, nobody will notice, because this key actually
> doesn't do anything!" ... wow ...

Cherry's "STRAIT" keyboard doesn't emit scan codes for some key combinations
because, quote support, it's "not necessary for windows certification".
So you have to find out the hard way the hardware emits NOTHING for,
e.g., win+alt+space and win+shift+space (if you're an awesome-wm user,
you'll twitch roundabout now).

So I'm not surprised at all. "clever" manufacturers and designers,
how I hate them. There's only boycot to educate those.

Regards,
-Martin

[Valeri Galtsev]

On Fri, June 24, 2016 3:24 pm, Manish Jain wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I have a rather bad experience switching to SSD on FreeBSD 10.3 amd64.
Things would have been much worse had the SSD switch not worked for my
other OS - Windows XP, a bit surprising because XP does not support SSD
TRIM.
>
> For my upgrade, there were 3 components which I upgraded simultaneously
:
>
> 1) Keyboard -> LED backlit keyboard (Cooler Master Devastator, USB) 2) 2
GB DDR3 RAM -> 8GB DDR3 (G Skill)
> 3) Sata HD -> SSD (Samsung EVO 500 GB)
>
> The keyboard upgrade itself failed for FreeBSD. The moment I switch on
the
> LED backlight light for the keys, console output freezes till I turn off
the backlight. This is surprising because the keyboard works well on XP,
which was developed almost 2 decades back. The reason this is important
for me is because I love working in the dark, with no bright lights
around. LED keyboards make that possible. Not just that, the keyboard
looks sensational - particularly with LED on, when the thing looks
futuristic.

It's useful that you share that, but it doesn't resemble the subject... I
know, sometimes it is really hard to make subject say what you will
describe.

>
> So I resigned myself to working without the LED. Upon installation of
FreeBSD and Gnome3, the desktop started crashing. I suspected the RAM to
be defective and reinstalled the whole OS with the RAM switched to the
original 2 GB - which was working flawlessly on previous FreeBSD 10.2
installation. Upon reinstall, things were much better, but then Gnome
Tweak Tool just does not work. This makes it impossible to get the
Applications menu and the Window list, which I find absolutely
essential.
> There is no way I can work the Activities system that Gnome ships with
as
> default. Hotspot makes things much worse, although I think there is an
extension that disable hotspot. But first I have to get the Activities
menu and the Window List, without which I just can't use Gnome. If I
can't
> get Gnome to work for me, FreeBSD itself becomes useless as a desktop
OS.

I suspect some hardware problems, maybe not fully compatible or flaky new
RAM. Your SSD sounds really good, I exclude that just based on its
reputation. I myself just switched to similar Samsung (only 1 TB) my
laptop (FreeBSD 10.3; Fujitsu Ultrabook U904). All happily works and rock
solid for me. I do not use Gnome, I use Mate instead. My laptop keyboard
backlite turns ON and OFF without problem (I can see somebody already
figured out what happens in your case). I didn't test/tweak many thing yet
(and usually I only tweak a few)... Question: did you have the same
everything (hardware wise and settings/tweaks wise) before you switched to
SSD? As I for one can not see any reason to blame switching to SSD for
this bucket of problems.

>
> So I crapped the FreeBSD installation and switched to Windows XP +
Cygwin.
> On XP, the whole thing works fantastically. My system is much faster,
roughly 3 times compared to when I had the SATA HD. Now I am stuck with
Windows XP, when the entire upgrade had targeted removal of XP and
FreeBSD
> as the only OS.

Windows XP is not supported for quite long, and after the end of support
there were several security problems discovered, which your unsupported XP
is vulnerable to. I would recommend to relly quit on Windows XP. I have to
use windows occasionally (I run it under VirtualBox on FreeBSD
machines: laptop and workstation), nothing lower than Windows 7 can be
safely run.

Good luck making FreeBSD work for you! Even if it takes some effort it's
well worth it.

Valeri

> The LED keyboard situation is unwarranted - FreeBSD should
> by now be having support for USB LED keyboard. The Gnome situation is an
equal concern. FreeBSD is famous for making sensible choices. The Gnome
developers have screwed up the desktop environment with rotten user
interface choices, and the thing now needs to be fixed with extensions
and
> tweak tools. This leads directly to inavailability of FreeBSD for me for
the time being. I was prepared to go without the keyboard - I could have
tried passing the USB commands to Widows XP hosted under VirtualBox.
That
> might have been possible, although I am not sure it would have worked.
But
> the additional Gnome problem leads me to
> revert
> to XP as the only OS for the time being. Hopefully things will be fixed
> with FreeBSD 11.0. Luckily for me, I used MBR partitioning when
> initializing the SSD - against the advice from this forum. Because of
that, I was able to try out XP, rather than having to roll back the
whole
> upgrade.
>
> I hope developers at FreeBSD and Gnome become aware of my experience - I
dearly wish things will be fixed ASAP.
>
> Thank you.
> Manish Jain
>
> _______________________________________________
> freebsd-***@freebsd.org mailing list
> https://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
> To unsubscribe, send any mail to
> "freebsd-questions-***@freebsd.org"
>


++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Valeri Galtsev
Sr System Administrator
Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics
Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics
University of Chicago
Phone: [phone]
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

[Valeri Galtsev]

On Fri, June 24, 2016 4:25 pm, Polytropon wrote:
> On Fri, 24 Jun 2016 15:58:12 -0500, Dean E. Weimer wrote:
>> On 2016-06-24 3:24 pm, Manish Jain wrote:
>> > Hi,
>
>> Someone else might have a better idea for a work around on this.
>
> Press Scroll Lock to activate light (console locked), press Pause/Break
> to unlock console again. As both keys are next to each other,
> develop the routine to press them after each other to toggle the
> light. Inside X, Scroll Lock usually has no function assigned,
> so it shouldn't be a problem there.

And this is how we develop bad habits. Adjusting our brilliant souls
(myself excluded) to bad hardware. Sigh.

Valeri

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Valeri Galtsev
Sr System Administrator
Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics
Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics
University of Chicago
Phone: [phone]
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

[Martin S. Weber]

On 2016-06-24 20:24:52, Manish Jain wrote:
> (...)
> For my upgrade, there were 3 components which I upgraded simultaneously :
> (...)
> 3) Sata HD -> SSD (Samsung EVO 500 GB)
> (...)

For the record, I use the same SSD (on 10.3-R-p5), and see no issues.

$ dmesg | grep -i sams
ada2: <Samsung SSD 850 EVO 500GB EMT01B6Q> ACS-2 ATA SATA 3.x device

That's my /

Regards,
-Martin

[Manish Jain]

On 6/25/2016 2:44 AM, Valeri Galtsev wrote:
> On Fri, June 24, 2016 3:24 pm, Manish Jain wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> I have a rather bad experience switching to SSD on FreeBSD 10.3 amd64.
> Things would have been much worse had the SSD switch not worked for my
> other OS - Windows XP, a bit surprising because XP does not support SSD
> TRIM.
>>
>> For my upgrade, there were 3 components which I upgraded simultaneously
> :
>>
>> 1) Keyboard -> LED backlit keyboard (Cooler Master Devastator, USB) 2) 2
> GB DDR3 RAM -> 8GB DDR3 (G Skill)
>> 3) Sata HD -> SSD (Samsung EVO 500 GB)
>>
>> The keyboard upgrade itself failed for FreeBSD. The moment I switch on
> the
>> LED backlight light for the keys, console output freezes till I turn off
> the backlight. This is surprising because the keyboard works well on XP,
> which was developed almost 2 decades back. The reason this is important
> for me is because I love working in the dark, with no bright lights
> around. LED keyboards make that possible. Not just that, the keyboard
> looks sensational - particularly with LED on, when the thing looks
> futuristic.
>
> It's useful that you share that, but it doesn't resemble the subject... I
> know, sometimes it is really hard to make subject say what you will
> describe.
>
>>
>> So I resigned myself to working without the LED. Upon installation of
> FreeBSD and Gnome3, the desktop started crashing. I suspected the RAM to
> be defective and reinstalled the whole OS with the RAM switched to the
> original 2 GB - which was working flawlessly on previous FreeBSD 10.2
> installation. Upon reinstall, things were much better, but then Gnome
> Tweak Tool just does not work. This makes it impossible to get the
> Applications menu and the Window list, which I find absolutely
> essential.
>> There is no way I can work the Activities system that Gnome ships with
> as
>> default. Hotspot makes things much worse, although I think there is an
> extension that disable hotspot. But first I have to get the Activities
> menu and the Window List, without which I just can't use Gnome. If I
> can't
>> get Gnome to work for me, FreeBSD itself becomes useless as a desktop
> OS.
>
> I suspect some hardware problems, maybe not fully compatible or flaky new
> RAM. Your SSD sounds really good, I exclude that just based on its
> reputation. I myself just switched to similar Samsung (only 1 TB) my
> laptop (FreeBSD 10.3; Fujitsu Ultrabook U904). All happily works and rock
> solid for me. I do not use Gnome, I use Mate instead. My laptop keyboard
> backlite turns ON and OFF without problem (I can see somebody already
> figured out what happens in your case). I didn't test/tweak many thing yet
> (and usually I only tweak a few)... Question: did you have the same
> everything (hardware wise and settings/tweaks wise) before you switched to
> SSD? As I for one can not see any reason to blame switching to SSD for
> this bucket of problems.
>
>>
>> So I crapped the FreeBSD installation and switched to Windows XP +
> Cygwin.
>> On XP, the whole thing works fantastically. My system is much faster,
> roughly 3 times compared to when I had the SATA HD. Now I am stuck with
> Windows XP, when the entire upgrade had targeted removal of XP and
> FreeBSD
>> as the only OS.
>
> Windows XP is not supported for quite long, and after the end of support
> there were several security problems discovered, which your unsupported XP
> is vulnerable to. I would recommend to relly quit on Windows XP. I have to
> use windows occasionally (I run it under VirtualBox on FreeBSD
> machines: laptop and workstation), nothing lower than Windows 7 can be
> safely run.
>
> Good luck making FreeBSD work for you! Even if it takes some effort it's
> well worth it.
>
> Valeri
>
>> The LED keyboard situation is unwarranted - FreeBSD should
>> by now be having support for USB LED keyboard. The Gnome situation is an
> equal concern. FreeBSD is famous for making sensible choices. The Gnome
> developers have screwed up the desktop environment with rotten user
> interface choices, and the thing now needs to be fixed with extensions
> and
>> tweak tools. This leads directly to inavailability of FreeBSD for me for
> the time being. I was prepared to go without the keyboard - I could have
> tried passing the USB commands to Widows XP hosted under VirtualBox.
> That
>> might have been possible, although I am not sure it would have worked.
> But
>> the additional Gnome problem leads me to
>> revert
>> to XP as the only OS for the time being. Hopefully things will be fixed
>> with FreeBSD 11.0. Luckily for me, I used MBR partitioning when
>> initializing the SSD - against the advice from this forum. Because of
> that, I was able to try out XP, rather than having to roll back the
> whole
>> upgrade.
>>
>> I hope developers at FreeBSD and Gnome become aware of my experience - I
> dearly wish things will be fixed ASAP.
>>
>> Thank you.
>> Manish Jain

Sorry, the title of the my message was misleading. The problem was not
SSD : rather it was LED keyboard and Gnome Tweak Tool.

Regards

Manish Jain

[Polytropon]

On Fri, 24 Jun 2016 20:24:52 +0000, Manish Jain wrote:
> Upon reinstall, things were much better, but then Gnome Tweak Tool
> just does not work. This makes it impossible to get the Applications
> menu and the Window list, which I find absolutely essential. There
> is no way I can work the Activities system that Gnome ships with as
> default.

That is one of the reasons I stopped using Gnome 3, and I'm not
entirely happy with Gnome 2 either (too many things not working
as intended). It's not a big help, but always keep in mind that
Gnome is developed for Linux primarily, which is an operating
system different from FreeBSD. Many things can be ported, but
not _all_ things. My impression is that Linux-centric software
becomes less and less portable toward FreeBSD. The reason might
be that Linux is a kind of "moving target" that frequently
replaces those parts already supported with new parts, and
makes things unique to the Linux kernel or the GNU/Linux user-
land services _mandatory_ for developing application software.



> But first I have to get the Activities menu and the Window List,
> without which I just can't use Gnome. If I can't get Gnome
> to work for me, FreeBSD itself becomes useless as a desktop OS.

Did you consider using KDE, LXDE, or Xfce? Those are desktop
environments that may have better FreeBSD support than Gnome 3.
Maybe you can also try Gnome 2 or Mate, or Lumina (the desktop
environment PC-BSD comes with).



> My system is much faster, roughly 3 times compared to when I
> had the SATA HD.

There are several optimizations that you can apply when using
a SSD instead of a traditional HDD. Here is some inspiration:

http://www.wonkity.com/~wblock/docs/html/ssd.html

I have applied another set of newfs options and "re-invented"
swap and /tmp, while not partitioning anything at all. :-)



> The LED keyboard situation is unwarranted - FreeBSD should by
> now be having support for USB LED keyboard.

This mystery has been solved. :-)



> The Gnome situation is an equal concern.

Consider using a different desktop environment. There are at
least 3 candidates which can "do the same" as Gnome 3.



> The Gnome developers have screwed up the desktop environment
> with rotten user interface choices, and the thing now needs
> to be fixed with extensions and tweak tools.

This probably is a symptom of Linux becoming more like "Windows",
I hope I'm wrong here...



> This leads directly to inavailability of FreeBSD for me for
> the time being.

As soon as all the Linuxisms inside Gnome are fully supported on
FreeBSD, they will be replaced by something different. It's not
that this kind of development is entirely new, nor is it a big
surprise. Just check our history lessons about HAL. :-)



> But the additional Gnome problem leads me to revert to XP as
> the only OS for the time being.

That's probably fine as long as you don't connect it to the
Internet. Keep in mind that "Windows XP" is 10+ years old and
went out of support more than 2 years ago.



> Hopefully things will be fixed with FreeBSD 11.0.

Gnome 3 problems surely are not related to the FreeBSD OS. I'd
say it's more of a porting problem.



> Luckily for me, I used MBR partitioning when initializing
> the SSD - against the advice from this forum.

Terminology sidenote: This is not a forum (usually used for
web forum), it's a mailing list. ;-)

But there's nothing entirely wrong with MBR partitioning, especially
when you want to use "Windows" (considered a "legacy system").
Leaving out partitioning at all (called "dedicated") is fine
was well, as long as you know what you're doing. :-)



> I hope developers at FreeBSD and Gnome become aware of my
> experience - I dearly wish things will be fixed ASAP.

It's quite possible that you can help them by providing information
both to the initial developers of Gnome 3 as well as to the person(s)
responsible for porting the software to FreeBSD (check the maintainer
of the project). Open source developers tend to listen more to their
users than those who "sell the box, then forget about the customer"
type of vendors, simply because they can rely on vendor lock-in to
keep the customer paying. On FreeBSD, there is choice. Gnome 3 does
not work for you? Stop using it. Try something different. It's not
that this step makes you lose 25 years of valuable customer data. :-)




PS. Please break your lines around column 70. This makes quoting
and processing easier. :-)

--
Polytropon
Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...

[Brandon J. Wandersee]

> I hope developers at FreeBSD and Gnome become aware of my experience -
> I dearly wish things will be fixed ASAP.

This isn't customer service. If you "dearly wish things to be fixed
ASAP," file bug reports and interact with other users. That interaction
is the only way to learn what the problems are and how to fix
them. Giving up immediately and complaining on these lists won't
accomplish anything.

Also, according to your message, you never even tried "switching to
SSD on FreeBSD 10.3." So the title is misleading too.

> Luckily for me, I used MBR partitioning when initializing the SSD -
> against the advice from this forum. Because of that, I was able to
> try out XP, rather than having to roll back the whole upgrade.

You can change the partition table on a disk anytime you like...

--

:: Brandon J. Wandersee
:: ***@gmail.com
:: --------------------------------------------------
:: 'The best design is as little design as possible.'
:: --- Dieter Rams ----------------------------------

[Warren Block]

On Fri, 24 Jun 2016, Manish Jain wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I have a rather bad experience switching to SSD on FreeBSD 10.3 amd64. Things would have been much worse had the SSD switch not worked for my other OS - Windows XP, a bit surprising because XP does not support SSD TRIM.
>
> For my upgrade, there were 3 components which I upgraded simultaneously :
>
> 1) Keyboard -> LED backlit keyboard (Cooler Master Devastator, USB)
> 2) 2 GB DDR3 RAM -> 8GB DDR3 (G Skill)
> 3) Sata HD -> SSD (Samsung EVO 500 GB)

I have multiple Samsung SSDs here, most used on FreeBSD-only systems.
11-CURRENT had a problem a couple of months back, but it was fixed in a
few hours.

The systems on 10-STABLE work perfectly.

I do not have a USB backlight keyboard, though, and it does sound like
most of the problems are in that area.

[Manish Jain]

On 6/25/2016 2:28 AM, Dean E. Weimer wrote:
> On 2016-06-24 3:24 pm, Manish Jain wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> I have a rather bad experience switching to SSD on FreeBSD 10.3 amd64.
>> Things would have been much worse had the SSD switch not worked for my
>> other OS - Windows XP, a bit surprising because XP does not support
>> SSD TRIM.
>>
>> For my upgrade, there were 3 components which I upgraded simultaneously :
>>
>> 1) Keyboard -> LED backlit keyboard (Cooler Master Devastator, USB)
>> 2) 2 GB DDR3 RAM -> 8GB DDR3 (G Skill)
>> 3) Sata HD -> SSD (Samsung EVO 500 GB)
>>
>> The keyboard upgrade itself failed for FreeBSD. The moment I switch on
>> the LED backlight light for the keys, console output freezes till I
>> turn off the backlight. This is surprising because the keyboard works
>> well on XP, which was developed almost 2 decades back. The reason this
>> is important for me is because I love working in the dark, with no
>> bright lights around. LED keyboards make that possible. Not just that,
>> the keyboard looks sensational - particularly with LED on, when the
>> thing looks futuristic.
>
> Cooler Master Devastator is a poorly designed LED keyboard for using on
> FreeBSD/Linux, I did a quick search because I was surprised it wouldn't
> work.
>
> The scroll lock key turns on/off the back light, so your console is
> freezing because its doing exactly what you told it to do when pressing
> the scroll lock button. Its not an issue with FreeBSD not supporting the
> LED backlit keyboard, just that they chose a poor key to link the on/off
> feature of the LED to when using the keyboard on FreeBSD/Linux. You may
> be able to work around it by using scroll lock prior to FreeBSD starting
> to boot and hopefully it will stay on.
>
> Someone else might have a better idea for a work around on this.

If the keyboard is going to be a problem forever, I think I will get it
replaced with something that works smoothly. Could you be kind enough to
look up Razer Deathstalker Wired USB Standard Keyboard - will that
keyboard be okay ? If not, there is very expensive option - Roccat Isku
FX Multicolor USB Gaming Keyboard. Will either keyboard solve the
problem once and for all?


Thank you.
Manish Jain

[Manish Jain]

>>>
>>> 1) Keyboard -> LED backlit keyboard (Cooler Master Devastator, USB)
>>> 2) 2 GB DDR3 RAM -> 8GB DDR3 (G Skill)
>>> 3) Sata HD -> SSD (Samsung EVO 500 GB)
>>>
>>> The keyboard upgrade itself failed for FreeBSD. The moment I switch on
>>> the LED backlight light for the keys, console output freezes till I
>>> turn off the backlight. This is surprising because the keyboard works
>>> well on XP, which was developed almost 2 decades back. The reason this
>>> is important for me is because I love working in the dark, with no
>>> bright lights around. LED keyboards make that possible. Not just that,
>>> the keyboard looks sensational - particularly with LED on, when the
>>> thing looks futuristic.
>>
>> Cooler Master Devastator is a poorly designed LED keyboard for using on
>> FreeBSD/Linux, I did a quick search because I was surprised it wouldn't
>> work.
>>
>
>> Someone else might have a better idea for a work around on this.
>
> Press Scroll Lock to activate light (console locked), press Pause/Break
> to unlock console again. As both keys are next to each other,
> develop the routine to press them after each other to toggle the
> light. Inside X, Scroll Lock usually has no function assigned,
> so it shouldn't be a problem there.


I found a doc which says the keyboard can be used with linux with this
script :

#!/bin/bash
FLAGS=$(xset -q | awk 'NR==2' | awk '{ print $10 }')
if [ "$FLAGS" = 00000000 ]; then
xset led on
else
xset led off
fi

Would this kind of script work on FreeBSD too ?

[Martin S. Weber]

On 2016-06-25 09:08:46, Manish Jain wrote:
> (...)
> I found a doc which says the keyboard can be used with linux with this
> script :
>
> #!/bin/bash
#! /bin/sh

> FLAGS=$(xset -q | awk 'NR==2' | awk '{ print $10 }')
.. ^ { print $10 }
> if [ "$FLAGS" = 00000000 ]; then
> xset led on
> else
> xset led off
> fi
>
> Would this kind of script work on FreeBSD too ?

Sure, it does. No need for /bin/bash or the double awk invocation. xset led
toggles my numlock status led, you'll have to test with your hardware (you've
received instructions on how to unlock your console after enabling the LED
with your hardware switch already anyways..), but I'd expect this to work.

Regards,
-Martin

[Manish Jain]

On 6/25/2016 2:53 PM, Martin S. Weber wrote:
> On 2016-06-25 09:08:46, Manish Jain wrote:
>> (...)
>> I found a doc which says the keyboard can be used with linux with this
>> script :
>>
>> #!/bin/bash
> #! /bin/sh
>
>> FLAGS=$(xset -q | awk 'NR==2' | awk '{ print $10 }')
> .. ^ { print $10 }
>> if [ "$FLAGS" = 00000000 ]; then
>> xset led on
>> else
>> xset led off
>> fi
>>
>> Would this kind of script work on FreeBSD too ?
>
> Sure, it does. No need for /bin/bash or the double awk invocation. xset led
> toggles my numlock status led, you'll have to test with your hardware (you've
> received instructions on how to unlock your console after enabling the LED
> with your hardware switch already anyways..), but I'd expect this to work.
>
> Regards,
> -Martin
>

Thank you so much for confirming it.

Regards

[Polytropon]

On Sat, 25 Jun 2016 09:08:46 +0000, Manish Jain wrote:
> >>>
> >>> 1) Keyboard -> LED backlit keyboard (Cooler Master Devastator, USB)
> >>> 2) 2 GB DDR3 RAM -> 8GB DDR3 (G Skill)
> >>> 3) Sata HD -> SSD (Samsung EVO 500 GB)
> >>>
> >>> The keyboard upgrade itself failed for FreeBSD. The moment I switch on
> >>> the LED backlight light for the keys, console output freezes till I
> >>> turn off the backlight. This is surprising because the keyboard works
> >>> well on XP, which was developed almost 2 decades back. The reason this
> >>> is important for me is because I love working in the dark, with no
> >>> bright lights around. LED keyboards make that possible. Not just that,
> >>> the keyboard looks sensational - particularly with LED on, when the
> >>> thing looks futuristic.
> >>
> >> Cooler Master Devastator is a poorly designed LED keyboard for using on
> >> FreeBSD/Linux, I did a quick search because I was surprised it wouldn't
> >> work.
> >>
> >
> >> Someone else might have a better idea for a work around on this.
> >
> > Press Scroll Lock to activate light (console locked), press Pause/Break
> > to unlock console again. As both keys are next to each other,
> > develop the routine to press them after each other to toggle the
> > light. Inside X, Scroll Lock usually has no function assigned,
> > so it shouldn't be a problem there.
>
>
> I found a doc which says the keyboard can be used with linux with this
> script :
>
> #!/bin/bash
> FLAGS=$(xset -q | awk 'NR==2' | awk '{ print $10 }')
> if [ "$FLAGS" = 00000000 ]; then
> xset led on
> else
> xset led off
> fi
>
> Would this kind of script work on FreeBSD too ?

First line would have to be #!/bin/sh, because /bin/bash is not part
of the FreeBSD default installation. But do you have a locking problem
in X? The script calls xset, this is _inside_ X. Scroll Lock doesn't
have a function inside X (per default). If I press Scroll Lock on my
keyboard, nothing happens (the LED doesn't even light up).

Furthermore, the xset invocation looks strange. Something is missing.
Accoding to "man xset":

led The led option controls the keyboard LEDs. This controls the
turning on or off of one or all of the LEDs. It accepts an
optional integer, a preceding dash(-) or an 'on/off' flag. If
no parameter or the 'on' flag is given, all LEDs are turned on.
If a preceding dash or the flag 'off' is given, all LEDs are
turned off. If a value between 1 and 32 is given, that LED
will be turned on or off depending on the existence of a pre-
ceding dash. ``xset led 3'' would turn led #3 on. ``xset -led
3'' would turn it off. The particular LED values may refer to
different LEDs on different hardware. If the X server supports
the XKEYBOARD (XKB) extension, leds may be referenced by the
XKB indicator name by specifying the `named' keyword and the
indicator name. For example, to turn on the Scroll Lock LED:

xset led named "Scroll Lock"

So that command would turn off all LEDs... which looks wrong... and
the example clearly states how to turn on the Scroll Lock LED (and
to turn it off: xset -led named "Scroll Lock").

Inside X, it would probably be the easiest thing to do _nothing_. :-)

In console mode, I'd suggest to re-assign Scroll Lock to "empty"
(no action).

Example:

Let's say you use "german ISO" (where in fact you're using a different
layout, but let's just assume this to illustrate the modification".
In /etc/rc.conf, you have something like this:

keymap="german.iso" # <--- this line
keyrate="fast"
font8x14="iso-8x14"
font8x16="iso-8x16"
font8x8="iso-8x8"
saver="no"
blanktime="NO"
scrnmap="NO"

Then you reference the /usr/share/syscons/keymaps/german.iso.kbd file.
In that file, there is a line

070 slock slock slock slock slock slock slock slock O
^^^^^

Which is the Scroll Lock key. The 2nd column is "slock", Scroll Lock.
Replace it with "nop" (no operation).

070 nop slock slock slock slock slock slock slock O
^^^

After restart, the key won't do anything except switching the background
light on and off. The Scroll Lock functionality (!) will be kept with the
Pause/Break key:

104 slock saver slock saver susp nop susp nop O

That's a "quick & dirty" instruction that doesn't survive an OS update
in a clean manner, but it should solve the problem (if you don't want
to go with the "Scroll Lock, Pause/Break" key sequence I suggested).




--
Polytropon
Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...