I have been regularly encountering an issue with a USB keyboard and mouse, where the mouse pointer freezes, and the keyboard experiences missed or delayed keystrokes. After approximately two seconds, it would unfreeze again, but the problem would reoccur almost immediately.
Having now found a solution, I thought I would share it in case anyone else is experiencing the same issue.
The issue seems to occur only with a USB keyboard and mouse – it did not occur when a PS/2 keyboard & trackpad combo were used. However, using the PS/2 ports is not a solution for me as they are not compatible with my main keyboard and mouse, not even with USB-to-PS/2 adaptors.
The issue was encountered on a SuperMicro X8DTL-3F motherboard with twin Xeon X5680 CPUs, which was being used as a developer Workstation.
The motherboard has BIOS version 2.1b (16-Nov-2012), which I believe is the latest.
The issue was observed on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, and Windows 7 Professional. This suggests it is a hardware issue rather than the operating system.
I tried both the on-board USB2 ports, and also an aftermarket USB3 card, but the problem persisted.
I had Legacy USB Support turned off in BIOS as otherwise the USB3 card is not detected under Ubuntu. But even with Legacy USB Support enabled, the problem still persisted.
I initially tried disabling the COM ports in BIOS. My rationale for this was that maybe it was an IRQ issue, or a polling / timeout issue. This change appeared to mitigate the issue somewhat, but didn’t cure it.
I then contacted SuperMicro tech support, and got a reply within 15 mins (outstanding!).
They suggested disabling IPMI by moving the JPB jumper (located between PCIe slot 3 and 4) from the 1-2 position to the 2-3 position, since IPMI is internally connected to USB on this motherboard and could potentially cause issues on the USB bus.
Having done this as well, I have not yet seen the issue re-occur.
NOTE: Simply disabling IPMI in BIOS is not sufficient, as I already had that disabled whilst experiencing the issue.
I have not as yet re-enabled the COM ports, since I do not need them enabled, so I cannot say whether it is solely the IPMI disable that fixes the issue, or whether you need to disable the COM port as well.
I have the exact same problem. This only started to happen when I pulled my NVIDIA card out. Otherwise I had never had a problem. I am assuming you are correct but I would like to add that if anyone pulled out their video card, and just used the mb chip for the VGA video; experiencing immediately herky jerky mouse movements. I will follow your advice but only after I re flash the Bios. I reset it, got a new cmos battery, used the defaulted safest settings in bios to no avail. I lost my mind rebooting but can only get in remotely using NoMachine.
I did pull my video card and that’s when it started to happen. Would it be insane to put it back?
Ubuntu 20.04
SuperMicro Super server 4 Cpus X8qb6-f
Well, it would certainly do no harm to put it back in and see what happens, if you are able to!
The only solution that truly worked was “disabling IPMI by moving the JPB jumper (located between PCIe slot 3 and 4) from the 1-2 position to the 2-3 position, since IPMI is internally connected to USB on this motherboard and could potentially cause issues on the USB bus.”
All other solutions failed horribly including re-flashing, Resetting CMOS with No Battery, and Re-seating the Video card. Pulling CPUS, Pulling Ram, mem Test. Either any time the server “went to sleep,” it became unrecoverable frozen both locally and via No-Machine (NM). It would stop working and freeze when booted up. Take your pick 50/50.
Even when I cold re-booted it would immediately freeze up locally, but I would be able to get in using No machine only for a few minutes before it would freeze. I would then reboot via NM and then locally change the Bios to safe Default to no avail. Yeah, it would work but only as a tease for a few minutes. I gave up.
As soon as I had my morning coffee i tried the above like you said. “NO MORE PROBLEMS,” and my server seems more responsive. Big Kudos to You and SuperMicro for helping. They actually helped me before on another matter. It just me not asking for help…. as usual. Well this post helped me.
I’m sure Multiprocessor X8 boards out there will appreciate this post. Thanks again.
I’m happy to have helped!
but what if I want IPMI? I actually need IPMI
Probably best if you contact SuperMicro directly, as I do not know. Sorry!