X loses wireless input devices

[Peter Hutterer]

On Mon, Jun 11, 2012 at 06:02:48PM -0700, Yan Seiner wrote:
> Peter Hutterer wrote:
> >On Sat, Jun 09, 2012 at 07:45:53AM -0700, Yan Seiner wrote:
> >>I have a multiseat setup where 2 of the seats use wireless mice and
> >>keyboards.  After some random time measured in hours/days, those two
> >>seats "lose" the input devices.  They become non-responsive.  The
> >>LEDs on the hardware light up so I know the mice and keyboards are
> >>awake and sending signals, but the X session itself does not
> >>respond.  There is nothing interesting in the log files.  the one
> >>seat with wired devices is fine.
> >>
> >>If I kill that X client and let kdm restart it, it will work fine
> >>for a while.  What information can I provide to help diagnose this?
> >
> >you've disabled hotplugging, so if the device disappears at the kernel level
> >at any point in time, it will not come back until you've restarted the
> >server (VT switch should do too, btw). that is my suspicion here though that
> >should usually print read errors to the logs. there isn't really much you
> >can do about this, the old device model doesn't really lend itself for
> >hotplugging.
> By hotplugging you mean setting Option "AutoAddDevices" "true"?  If
> I do that, every input device gets assigned to every seat, so that
> keyboard attached to seat 1 also shows up on seats 2 and 3, and
> every mouse moves every cursor.
> 
> Is there any way to limit the pool of "AutoAddDevices" so that it
> works correctly with multi-seat?

1.12 has the ID_SEAT support, so if you set that property through udev the
server only adds the matching ones. You'd have to then start the X server
with -seat, see the commit message to
159b03e13760920274b573a2bccdbf6a79f059e7 for some detail.

If you can't update your server, you can use the ID_INPUT.tags udev
properties, together with a MatchTag in your xorg.conf InputClass section to
limit devices. not as automatic but it'll get you there with hotplugging
enabled.


Cheers,
  Peter

> >you also seem to have input devices with no names? what devices are those?
> >(event9 and event10)
> They're whatever udev decides... Not really sure where they came from.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> >
> >>Here's xorg.conf:
> >>
> >>Section "ServerLayout"
> >>   Identifier     "akari"
> >>   Screen      0  "akari-scr" 0 0
> >>   InputDevice    "akari-kbd" "CoreKeyboard"
> >>   InputDevice    "akari-mouse" "CorePointer"
> >>   Option      "AutoEnableDevices"     "true"
> >>   Option      "AutoAddDevices"        "false"
> >>   Option      "AllowEmptyInput"       "true"
> >
> >btw, we've removed this option in the server because people kept using it,
> >despite it having no useful effect.
> OK; not sure where it came from either and it seems to do no harm.  :-)
> 
> I'll remove it.
> 
>