[arch-general] PS/2 Hand Scanner Problems

[Sean Snell]

Hey everybody!

I'm dealing with what I believe is a kernel issue, but I'm still learning
so please bear with me.

I've used Arch for the better part of 2+ years, and it's taught me more
about Linux and the way it works more than any other distro to date. That
being said, I'm not a complete n00b, but please deal with me as I'll
probably have moments that'll need clarification.

The goal: To get a number of our aging HP t5730 terminals, used as POS
terminals, relevant again using our existing hardware to extend their
usability. So far tentative testing has shown this a feasible option so
long as I can get all hardware working as expected.

The problem: I have a PS/2 hand scanner that works perfectly as a HID in
Windows, verified working on the untouched terminals still using the "old
system", but under Arch it's acting as if it's detected but it doesn't give
it's scanned data to any apps. The USB CC reader is working fine, as is the
receipt printer.

The symptoms:

dmesg -t | grep '^i8042'

...returns the following output:

i8042: PNP: PS/2 Controller [PNP0303:PS2K] at 0x60,0x64 irq 1
i8042: PNP: PS/2 appears to have AUX port disabled, if this is
incorrect please boot with i8042.nopnp

The hand scanner is "working" in the sense that I can push the button, the
scanner lights up, and * beeps * when I scan a barcode. However, that's all
it does. It does not pass that data onto to any simple applications such as
mousepad, or even the terminal.

What I've tried:

   1.

   Yes, I've read this, but as the controller appears to be detected, this
   doesn't appear as relevant detail to me. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
   <https://www.archlinux.org/news/linux-313-warning-ps2-keyboard-support-is-now-modular/>
   [1]
   2.

   I found this post, and I attempted the user's Grub entries, but those
   didn't help. I've undone those changes and I'm currently back at "square
   one". I know how to work with Grub, so I know I didn't make simple mistakes
   here; when applied, these entries caused the grep command to inform me that
   PNP was disabled, still made no positive impact.
   <https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=176497>[2]

Other Observations: I've tried a number of live- distros, and the
surprising thing is that other, older distros (Such as DSL, kernel 2.x)
work just fine without any tinkering at all. Further reading online
suggests that this is because of the kernel version. It seems that one of
the 3.x kernel updates seems to have dropped some PS/2 support. This also
proves to me that this *should* be able to work, I just can't figure out
the proper ways of troubleshooting this problem based on this observation.

I'm at work all day dealing with this project, so I'll be online most of
the day. Thank you so much ahead of time for any help that you can give me!

:)