On Sat, 2004-09-11 at 23:56, John McBride wrote: > Some of our kvms, notably linksys, started having real problems with FC2 > as soon as people started plugging in wireless mice (usually the > Microsoft Explorer wireless mouse). They are using the little usb to > ps2 adapters to do this. The mouse just goes crazy in console/gpm > (runlevel 3) or X, jumping all over the screen, issuing wild text > commands to the command prompt, etc. > > I found the fix over on linuxquestions.org. There is a kernel option to > add to /etc/grub.conf: > psmouse.proto=imps > (also "bare" or "exps", possibly others). > > From what I can see: > "bare" provides a generic 2 button mouse, with 3rd button emulation. > "imps" lets the explorer wheel act like a third button. > "exps" should enable the wheel, but actually left the thing hosed (as > before). > > On a couple machines, after adding this boot option, I had to run > system-config-mouse to set up the mouse, then move the > /etc/X11/xorg.conf and run system-config-display under X to get > everything cleaned up. Console mode (runlevel 3) was very useful for > testing though. > > While I was fooling around with the boot options on one FC2 box, I used > Windows 2K on another port. This was a little interesting--the green > light on the wireless mouse receiver blinks when changing ports, and > also when W2K was just about to launch the greeter, during bootup, right > when the display blanks. They are resetting the mouse, I think, while > going graphical. > > I've noticed the green light blinks when linux boots, once, but very > early on. Right around the first ACPI probes. The mouse driver must be > setting up for "exps" and that's borked somehow--exps breaks the > explorer mouse, at least with this hardware configuration. If the mouse > is plugged directly into the ps2 port, it is fine, so it's a > combination/stack of hw causing this. > > Restarting gpm does not blink the light, and I didn't see it blink while > starting or running X either. I wonder...is there a way to reset the > mouse in FC2, such that the light blinks? I ask because after switching > between ports for 20 minutes or so, trying to debug this while doing web > searches, I saw the mouse freeze under W2K for a second, and then then > the receiver light blinked. Could it be that somehow MS is detecting > that the mouse is haywire, freezing the cursor by ignoring it, and then > resetting the mouse? What an awful thing for software to go through, but > with this particular hw stack maybe such a thing is necessary? > > Regards, > John There have been a number of threads concerning mice and KVM problems. The fix you found has worked for many people. There was one thread that discussed a patch that needed to be tested. I believe that patch looked for odd values (which sounded like it caused the wild movements) and reset the mouse. I do not remember reading any results of this patch being used. Check back about 2 or 3 months in the archives for that discussion. -- Scot L. Harris webid@xxxxxxxxxx A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery. -- James Joyce, "Ulysses"
