Hi all.

I'm more-or-less a newbie to Linux. I know enough to use the system for day-to-day stuff (how to navigate the filesystem, mount drives, use vim, etcetera), but in the process of trying to get my hardware working I've learned that I know a lot less than I thought I did.

Anyhoo, here's the problem I'm encountering at the moment. I have a USB mouse and a USB printer (HP DeskJet 940C) that simply will not work right. When I first tried to start up X it wouldn't start because the mouse wasn't configured correctly. Under the mouse section in the XF86Config file I changed the Protocol to "IMPS/2" and the device to "/dev/psaux". This fixed it so that X would start and I could use the mouse. After that I downloaded and installed OpenOffice and tried to print a document but I had no luck. I found out about apsfilter and ran the setup program; this didn't help.

The problem I'm encountering is that /dev/usb/lp0 (which is where my printer is) isn't being detected. If I give the command: echo "test" > /dev/usb/lp0, I get the message "No such device". After a ton of searches on google I found that in the /etc/rc.d/rc.modules file I could uncomment several lines to enable a USB printer. The lines are "/sbin/modprobe/ usb-uhci" under the heading "USB Host Controllers" and "/sbin/modprobe printer" under the heading "USB device support".

After rebooting my computer for the changes to take effect I can send an echo statement to /dev/usb/lp0 and the printer will print it. However, when I start X the mouse is completely useless. I can't move it and the buttons have no effect. What's more, printing still doesn't work in OpenOffice (it only seems to work from the command line). When I change the rc.modules file back to the way it was originally and reboot, the printer no longer works even at the command line, but my mouse works when I start X.

So, does anyone have any ideas? I appreciate any help anyone can offer.