Completely unpredicatble mouse behavior in X
 

Alright, I've heard of some strange mouse behavior in X-windows, and had some myself, but none such as strange as this... I finally got my 2.6 kernel working the other day on a fresh install of gentoo, and I went ahead and installed XFree86... I set up the config file the same way as it was before in the mosue section, which was:
Section "InputDevice"

Identifier "Mouse1"
Driver "mouse"
Option "Protocol" "IMPS/2"
Option "Device" "/dev/psaux"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"

EndSection

It worked without a hitch in my old 2.4 kernel system with the same exact mouse... only difference is, i previously added the line

Option "Resolution" "512"

but it appears that it doesn't matter if I add this line or not; i've tried it both ways.
The problem is, whenever I'm in X, no matter wether it's in KDE or twm, or wether I am using XFree86 or X.org (i've tried that one too), my mouse behaves completely uncontrollably. Sometimes it'll move like normal, but then you might touch the mouse again and it might decide to jump over to the upper-right hand corner of the display. Other times, if you click any button on the mouse, it might move in some random direction instead of clicking, but, then again, sometimes it'll work fine. The cursor also clicks at random, whenever there's any mouse activity (i.e.: simply moving the mouse). I'm really at a loss as to what might be causing this, particularly because it always worked before, and the same mouse works in windows too. By the way, said mouse is a generic PS/2 optical mouse; but i've tried a different optical USB mouse, as well, with the same exact problem.

Thanx for any help!

LOL, seems you've got a polstergeist on your mouse!!!
That's really weird. I guess you have to tweak the kernel for solving that, although i have no idea of what (input devices??) and i'm not in the 2.6 kernels, so my help won't be really helpfull, but it's the only thing that comes to my mind right now.

Make sure you're not running the console mouse service (usually referred to as gpm or gpmouse) while you're in X. I've always had to kill or disable it unless I wanted the cursor to go completely bonkers in X.


Håkan

First of all, sorry to all for the ultra-late post...

Anyway, to see about the kernel-tweaking problem I installed a 2.4.26 series kernel to see what happened; the same problem occoured, only this time for some reason the mouse snapps back to the lower-left hand corner, instead of the upper-right hand corner (I don't know if that means anything). So I don't think it's just a kernel problem.
Second, to the best of my knowledge, I have never run gpm or any other console mouse service, so I don't think it's that either...
The whole thing seems really strange now, since it does this now in 2.4 kernels, while before I did a clean install it worked fine on 2.4 kernels...
Thanx for the help!

Just an update on the last post, just to make absolutely certain that gdm wasn't the problem, I completely uninstalled gdm... However, this appears to have done nothing as well. Perhaps could it be a problem with the mouse section of my XF86Config? I haven't changed anything from what is was previously in this thread...
Thanx for any help!

check with ANOTHER MOUSE to see if your kernels srewed

Well, as you suggested, I checked with a third mouse this time, this time a different PS/2 mouse which I also know works in windows... yet I still am having the same symptoms. However, with this mouse the problems are not quite as bad for some reason, and not quite as common, but still render the mouse near to unusuable. I don't know if it means anything that the severity of the problem has to do with the particular mouse used...

Oh, and another thing: it seems that the problem sometimes gets worse the faster you move the mosue... don't know how helpful that information might be...

Maybe you could try:

Option "Device" "/dev/mouse" instead of psaux.

That's what I have in Slackware.

well, i tried that as well, and, once again, it did nothing... I also got the idea of trying an entirely separate X-windows setup by trying using the mouse in the X-window manager built into LNX-BBC (the bootable business card Linux CD). When I tested the mouse under LNX-BBC, it worked without a hitch, so I'm thinking it has to do with something that seems completely unrelated... I'm probably going to do a clean re-install, and I'll post back my results.

I have exactely the same problem on my notebook!!!
 

I have exactely the same problem on my notebook!!! This is since a couple of weeks, before I never had a similar problem.

Sometimes the cursor jumps around like crazy and *clicks* everywhere, when I try to *move*. This happens mostly (but not exclusively) if an external mouse is connected. Mostly, if I use the external mouse and the cursor starts jumping, I can touch the internal touchpad, then everything is normal again.

I have two external mice:
- At work a normal PS/2 mouse
- At home a scroll mouse IMPS, but the wheel does not work (configured as PS/2 because the two mice seem to be incompatible)

The problem exists with *both* mice!

Worse since SuSE 9.1, Kernel 2.6
 

Note: It has become much worse since update to SuSE9.1 yesterday! Now I really can't work anymore. The problem not only happens every couple of minutes with external mouse, but also quite often with external mouse/keayboard disconnected.

I am now about compiling kernel 2.6.7, hope it will help...!

Kernel 2.6.7 does not help!
 

Kernel 2.6.7 does not help, but I have more sys-messages:

A lot of during use of touch pad:
- psmouse.c: TouchPad at isa0060/serio2/input0 lost sync at byte 1
- psmouse.c: TouchPad at isa0060/serio2/input0 lost sync at byte 4

When using the external mouse and the mouse jumps around (repeated 2-3 times):
- atkbd.c: Spurious ACK on isa0060/serio0. Some program like XFree86, might be trying access hardware directly
- psmoouse.c: bad data from KBC - timeout

Any Idea?

Well, i have two kind of vague ideas:
First, are those external mice that you are using of a well-known brand? I know that my mouse is some kind of off brand, and you have to turn on the "Resolution" option in XF86Config in order to make it move more smoothly. Just a guess, but maybe your mouse is just Linux-unfriendly. Try it with another PC or another OS to see, perhaps.

Another thing: do you know what type of pointing device your laptop uses (i.e.: what brand/driver does your touchpad use?) The reason I'm asking is that I'm having problem's with my new laptop's Alps touchpad, as well, but I have that in another post... I know that those touchpads can be a little tricky, inherently, and may need their own drivers to control them separately...

To me, that is clearly a sign that your mouse cord is deffective.

I had exactly the same symptoms once, and
just cut the section of the cable that was the most torn during normal use
(like 15cm, starting from the mouse itself), then rewired.

Worked like a charm.

The mouse cord is NOT defective. He tried multiple mice and the problem persisted. Also, I am currently having this problem in Slackware 10 with kernel 2.6.8. I thought it was my MS natural kb and MS optical mouse. But the problem persisted when I hooked up my new Logitech wireless set. Also, when either kb/mouse setup is tested in Windows, it works fine.

These problems did not start until I performed a swaret update over a week ago.

Here's the thread I posted yesterday,
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...68#post1219568

The last suggestion is to try a different GUI than KDE.

Good Luck,
krfan1

I don't believe that the problem could be resident in KDE, considering that the mouse and keybaord drivers are part of X-windows. Pherhaps the problem resides in the version of Xorg or XFree that you are using. I don't remember now, but I think that when the problem went away on my desktop, it was after I upgraded all of my packages, and Xorg was most likely one of those updated. Hope this helps.

I'm almost positive it's gpm. I have had the same problem...

to check, go to a terminal and do 'ps aux'... if it lists gpm then that's your problem. Just find the pid and kill it. Hopefully your mouse will stop sucking then...

Try it, I can almost promise you that gpm is where your problem lies.

(also, if you don't want to bother with gpm you can probably set your device line to "/dev/gpmdata" ... read the docs to make sure this is an option.)

I have the same problem with a gentoo install, but I know it's not a hardware issue in the least (I use a KVM switch and the mouse runs perfectly on the other computers, and the cabling is fine).
I'll try checking for gpm, but I've run both a 2.4.26 kernel and a 2.6.9 kernel, both gentoo patched.
Something in the back of my mind is making me think it's the gentoo sources that's messing it up, because I've also noticed it likes to jump around when the processor is under any load, leading me to believe something in the scheduler is broken, and I don't get similar errors in other distros (it ran fine under Slack and it runs fine right now under Mandrake).
Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

Quick notes:
I'm using a Labtec wheelmouse, using the IMPS/2 option in xorg (emerged yesterday-ish), with no resolution set and with ZAxisMapping set up. I'll give replacing Axis for Res a test, with my res at something I feel is sufficient for my needs.

quick update: adding the Resolution option helped, but did not eliminate the problem. I'm not running gpm.
As we speak, I'm compiling up a non-gentoo 2.6.9 kernel with the same options as my gentoo one and I'm going to reboot and test that. If that solves it, we'll know that one of the gentoo patches lowers mouse priority in X or something similar.

the non-gentoo kernel seemed to generate even worse symptoms, but adding the Resolution option at 512 seems to have done well.
I might try other resolutions and tweak, though I'm not 100% sure what they'll do.

Have you made sure you are updating the right XF86Config file some of the new distros have started using XF86Config-4 even though the old file name is also listed. good luck!

I'm a step ahead of XF86Config-4, since my file is xorg.conf (since I'm running xorg)
I tried resolutions a bit, I think I'm getting best results around 512. (1024 seemed to have more serious erros and 256 seemed to have weaker errors that would jump harder at me.
This might not help at all, but I've noticed the problem gets a lot, lot worse when I first load up Wolfenstein Enemy Territory, or when I load into a new map on it. Just using the desktop and things, it's not much of an issue, but it's hard to play any FPS when there's a chance you'll suddenly find yourself shooting the sky and spinning in circles for apparently no reason :P

Thoughts / updates (if anybody's paying attention still):
I think it might be a driver conflict somewhere in my kernel, but I'm not sure. I hadn't manually done a kernel before moving to gentoo, and that's where I'm getting my errors. Is there a config option for 2.6 kernel compiles that affects how X and other things will handle a IMPS/2 optical wheel mouse?

I fixed it through the help of this thread here: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...hreadid=268021
Didn't even occur to me that the problem might be happening at that level. Good to have things running better now.

TouchPad at isa0060/serio2/input0 lost sync
 

<message deleted>

Thanks for the link ikataii. This almost fixed my problem. I have that USB legacy device option in my BIOS settings as well, and my mouse worked a bit better after disabling it. BUT the problem isn't completely solved, it still happens occasionally. Every once in a while it'll lag briefly, but that doesn't add any errors to syslog. I only get errors when it goes crazy and randomly clicks things. That's when I get "...lost synchronization, throwing x bytes away", x being either 1, 2, or 3. My search continues, I'll post back when I find the answer. This really is looking like a kernel problem (I'm running 2.6.12.5).