Hi,

I have been using Debian 3.1 (Sarge) with kernel 2.6.8-2-386 on my Pentium M system. A couple of days ago I noticed that my PS/2 mouse won't work when I enable the 'Legacy USB' option in my BIOS setting. If I disable the 'Legacy USB' option, my PS/2 mouse works fine along with USB mouse. My USB mouse works fine in both the situation i.e. when the 'Legacy USB' is enable/disable I have tried the workarounds like:

psmouse.proto=imps and i8042.nomux as kernel boot parameters but it didn;t help.

I did a lot of researching over the Internet and then I found that it is because in Kernel 2.6 they have moved the drivers into the kernel space from the user space. Unfortunately I was not able to find a solution how to get the PS/2 mouse working with USB Legacy option enabled in the BIOS.

Also, I have tried the following link but I was not successful.
http://www.informatik.uni-freiburg.d...lee/fun/psaux/


Also the following links reports that it is a bug but apparently no clear solution has been given.
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla....cgi?id=120859
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla....cgi?id=137691

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

I will be glad to post any diagnostic output like:
cat /proc/bus/input/devices
lspci -xvvv
dmidecode
etc....

Will upgrading to a newer kernel help?

Does this only occur in linux or is that your only os on this system ?


Mabye its some strange irq shareing violation or something. Not 100% sure.

well it happens in Debian only. I downloaded the Mandrake 10.2(kernel version 2.6.11-something) and the PS/2 mouse worked fine with "Legacy USB option". I haven't tried any other distro. Looks like some kernel configuration options are not enabled

anytakes???

Just disable USB Legacy then your troubles are over. What is the big deal.

If you are saying that the PS/2 just does not work with 2.6.x kernels. Then there is an easy fix that many distributions do not do. The PS/2 mouse have to be set as a module. Then upon boot up load psmouse module by adding to rc.local. Putting a line in /etc/modules.conf or /etc/modprobe.conf does not work because how earlier 2.6.x kernel detects PS/2.

You always upgrade to 2.6.14 or the next stable release. The kernel developers have fixed the PS/2 issue with kernel version 2.6.14 and up.

Thanks you very much for the effort. As far as I understood from you reply, I have to possible options:

1.Either I should upgrade my kernel to 2.6.14 and the problem is solved.

or

2. I should recompile the kernel with PS/2 mouse set as a module and then add a script which will load the module in the /etc/rc folder. If yes, then what is the line that needs to be added. Debain does not have anything such as rc.local.??

Thank you once again.

I suggest upgrading the kernel because 2.6.8 has a lot of problems and it is vulnerable.

The links below tell you how to setup the rc.local like file.
http://www.plope.com/Members/chrism/...rc_local_equiv
http://www.debian.org/doc/FAQ/ch-customizing.en.html

Thanks a Electro for all the effort!!! One last question, while upgrading my kernel to 2.6.14, is there any thing that I should keep in mind with regards to PS/2 mouse. Should I still compile PS/2 mouse as a module or just let it be the way it is.