USB keyboard/mouse/devices not working in RHEL 7.3

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New user here. I just installed RedHat Enterprise Linux 7.3 on a new system. After booting into the first-boot set up GUI, my keyboard and mouse are not working. They aren't even powered. I saw during the boot process these two errors:

usbserial: usb_serial_init - usb_register failed

usbserial: usb_serial_init - returning with error -19

I don't know if that's related to my problem. My keyboard/mouse are not connected via a hub, and I tried connecting to different USB ports but they still don't work. Interestingly, they work at the BIOS stage, in the RHEL GUI installer, and in the GRUB menu.

How do I fix this problem? Thanks.

BTW, I tried to re-install the whole system. While my keyboard/mouse worked during installation, they still end up unpowered/disconnected when booting into the installed OS.

PH
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Responses

PH Community Member 26 points
26 June 2017 3:55 PM

I got it to work after re-installing several times and trying different Security Policies, apparently some of them would end up disabling my USB. Not sure why?

Sam Wachira's picture Guru 2484 points
27 June 2017 11:37 AM

Thanks for sharing. Which Security Policies worked for you?

Christian Labisch's picture Guru 9765 points
27 June 2017 12:27 PM

Hi ! Did you select something different to the "default profile" during the installation process ? I'm asking because, when you choose the default profile, no special security policies are getting applied on the system installation and everything should work flawlessly out-of-the-box. :)

PH Community Member 26 points
27 June 2017 4:44 PM

Oh man I honestly forgot which policies worked in the end! At the moment I'm using the default one as Christian suggested, and I know the STIG ones don't work for me. But the others I can't remember... Sorry!

I'm guessing the STIG policies somehow restrict USB access? Maybe via SELinux?

Christian Labisch's picture Guru 9765 points
27 June 2017 4:54 PM

Most important is that your problem is solved and whenever SELinux detects a security flaw you will get a notification with suggestions how to cope with the issue. So, using the default profile is a safe way to go. :)

PH Community Member 26 points
27 June 2017 5:41 PM

Thanks!! Presumably the RHEL 7 documentation has more information about these security policies that I can read about? I'm still learning all this so if there's another resource about how all this works and why do let me know.

Christian Labisch's picture Guru 9765 points
27 June 2017 5:53 PM

You're welcome ! :) Additionally you can learn more about SELinux on : https://selinuxproject.org

SC Newbie 19 points
20 July 2017 9:59 PM

We have the same problem installing RHEL7 on HP Z600s (rhel-workstation-7.3-x86_64) . The default profile (aka do not pick a security profile) does not have this problem. Specifically, the Workstation STIG profile has this problem. Not sure about the rest. As far as I know, all keyboard and mouse now days when attached to a "workstation" with a GUI is USB. Only blackbox or embedded system use something else, like PS/2. It is surely a bug to disable whatever is that kills the mouse and keyboard.

Update: In this case it is not SELinux that broke some thing. :-) For those interested, the STIG apparently adds the keyword "nousb" to the kernel (grub.cfg) and so it disables ALL usb during boot. So just edit out the nousb (during boot up after install and again once it is booted) and the keyboard & mouse should work again. Obviously, you'll have to implement another method to disable USB use as media (flash drive, portable drive, etc.).

A little more detail, STIG settings are applied using openscap (cmd: oscap) to implement the settings. You can read more online at https://www.open-scap.org.

rT Newbie 9 points
6 August 2018 9:30 PM

Thank you! This was very helpful in troubleshooting my just-installed RHEL7.5 using the NIST STIG. I love that it's included as a default profile during install, but blocking usb mouse/keyboard... really? Need to differentiate between storage devices and peripherals.

Thanks again,

Tim

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