Hi,

I recently installed Redhat 9 on my Gericom Overdose 2 laptop. I am using a USB mouse rather than the touchpad.
Whenever I accidentally touch the latter however, the keyboard dies, i.e. I can no longer type anything.

Does anyone have any idea what this may be due to and how to fix it?

THanks,
FogSwimmer

I solved the issue (touching touchpad kills keyboard) by editing /etc/X11/XF86Config. The file didn't contain reference to my touchpad at all.

How did you do it? I have the same problem with SuSE 9 and a Dell laptop.

Sorry for the delay, I didn't see your post any earlier. This is how I
solved the problem described above:

1) To make the touchpad and the external mouse work under X you need to modify
/etc/X11/XF86Config (you may want to save a backup copy of the old
file). In this file you need a Section "InputDevice" entry for each mouse
you want to use. For my laptop this is what these entries look like:

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Mouse0"
Driver "mouse"
Option "Protocol" "PS/2"
Option "Device" "/dev/psaux"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
Option "Emulate3Buttons" "yes"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Mouse1"
Driver "mouse"
Option "Protocol" "IMPS/2"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
Option "Emulate3Buttons" "no"
EndSection

The first bit sets up the touchpad as a standard PS/2 device, the second is my
USB mouse (Logitech Wheel Mouse). Something along these lines should probably
work for you as well under X.


2) To get your touchpad working in console mode you need to modify
/etc/sysconfig/mouse (again, a backup copy won't hurt). On my system this
file now looks as follows:

FULLNAME="Generic - 2 Button Mouse (PS/2)"
MOUSETYPE="ps/2"
XEMU3="yes"
XMOUSETYPE="PS/2"
DEVICE=/dev/psaux

These are the entire contents of the file. With this configuration my touchpad
works fine in console mode, while the USB mouse is disabled.


I hope this helps.

All best,
FogSwimmer