In article <HEIM.92Mar23164350@frieda.informatik.uni-tuebingen.de> heim@frieda.informatik.uni-tuebingen.de (Gerald Heim) writes:
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>
> - At boot-time, when I am asked if I wish to select any VGA mode or
>   just press any key to stay at 80x25, I noticed that some keys will
>   keep the system from reading the root-image (i.e. the arrow-down key).

Ok, this is a known bug: it happens with all keys that send 2 keycodes
(the num-pad ENTER, cursor keys etc) and has to do with the fact that
the keyboard controller never gets an accnowledgement for them both, so
it doesn't interrupt when the next keys are pressed - thus linux won't
read the enter (or any other key) when the bootimage has been put in.

I don't know any fast fix: I haven't looked into it. It's probably a
one-line fix, but it's mostly cosmetic..

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> - The backspace-problem appears even on a virtual console where backspace
>   worked at first when I log out and try to log in again.

I think this is a problem with ash and the termios interface. ash
probably sets the back-space key to something else than \177. I dunno:
haven't used ash. Get bash, and this (and other problems) will go away
at the cost of some diskspace.

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> - One more bug: If I press ScrollLock and stay on the key for a few seconds,
>   I get a few dumps from the process table, then the kernel hangs and
>   prints: [ kernel panic deleted ]

Ok, this is a real bug: the keyboard interrupts happen too fast for all
the information to be printed, and the kernel stack gets overcrowded:
reboot. The easy solution is not to do this, the more complete solution
is to put some kind of lock on the info-key. I'll look into it.

                Linus