KVM switch with FreeBSD-8.2

[David Brodbeck]

On Sun, Sep 11, 2011 at 4:43 PM, Polytropon <freebsd at edvax.de> wrote:
> On Sun, 11 Sep 2011 15:10:48 -0600 (MDT), Warren Block wrote:
>> On Sun, 11 Sep 2011, Daniel Feenberg wrote:
>>
>> > If you are asking, "Is there a FreeBSD command to cause the KVM switch to
>> > move to the next system?" then the answer is "I don't know and it would amaze
>> > me if there were."
>>
>> There's often a key sequence to advance to the next port or a specific
>> port.
>
> That can _sometimes_ be a problem when the KVM switch
> doesn't properly detect this sequence - or maybe the
> user has already defined that sequence for some action
> in X, so X "catches" the sequence and acts properly.

X "catching" the sequence won't stop the switch from reacting to it --
it's done in hardware in the switch.  But of course X may do something
undesirable if the switch passes the key combination through.

The two most common ones are Ctrl, Alt, Shift (rapidly in sequence)
followed by a port number, or Ctrl twice.  The latter can be a little
too easy to trigger accidentally.

The USB switches generally emulate a generic USB keyboard and mouse,
so drivers aren't a problem.  Sometimes they work by simulating a USB
disconnect from the machine they're switching to, though, so you need
good keyboard and mouse hotplug support in the OS.

Generally these switches don't react well to having anything but a
keyboard in the keyboard port and a mouse in the mouse port.  If you
have a hub built into your keyboard the hub will be useless when
you're using one of these switches.