Spent most of the night trying to figure out what was going wrong with my mouse. All of a sudden, it stopped working, sort of. I could move the cursor around on the screen, but there were some icons that I couldn't click on, while others I could. Eventually, all of them became unclickable. I tried a ctrl+alt+delete to end session, and I couldn't even click on that, nor could I hit the enter key on the keyboard to select the end session button.

My mouse worked fine up until today, when this strange behavior started. I tried reinstalling Slack, and I'm still experiencing the same effect. Installing Slack a third time disabled the mouse on the cli.

Can anyone tell me what's going on? Slackware is the only distribution that I've used, and I really would like to continue the trend, but if I can't get this to work, I'm going to have to look elsewhere. What would be a good alternative to Slackware (something not too foreign) if I can't get this to work?

I was using the huge26.s kernel by the way.

I assume that you have actually verified there is not a hardware failure here? Like load up a live CD, and use that for a day or so, to see if the problem persists there.

Hmm..I'll have to try that one. I should have a live version of SuSE or Knoppix lying around somewhere.

I also should clarify that I'm using a Compaq laptop with a usb mouse. I don't have any more specs, as I'm currently going out the door onto work, but I could run any commands needed/necessary at the cli.

If it's not a hardware issue, maybe there might be a problem with the mouse daemon gpm

Is there some way I can check to see that the daemon is running ok?

Wow..ok I think I may have found something.

When I tried the 2.4 default kernel, I didn't notice this happening at all. However, I need the ipw2200 card for my wireless to work, which is the only reason I went with huge26 to begin with. Is it possible there's a kernel difference between these two that may throw the mouse into orbit?

That maybe the case, The 2.6 kernels use a different mouse device than the 2.4's. The 2.4's use devfs to create all the devices in the /dev directory, while 2.6's now uses udev and hotplug to create the devices in the /dev directory.

I also have an entry in my /etc/X11/xorg.conf file to support the usb mouse, also support the scroll button:

I wonder if putting the entry in the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file may make it a bit more stable.

Thanks Fotoguy. I'll give that a try.

Nope, this hasn't worked either. The mouse still fails to select some buttons part of the time. I even tried killing the gpm daemon, but still no luck.

Does the touchpad mouse given with your laptop work correctly?

So does this problem only happen while Xserver is running ?

You should post the relevant part of /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Here is my xorg.conf (the relevant part), possibly important part(s) in red

Note that this is specific to my computer and mouse, it may or may not work for yours.

I'm about to head to sleep, so I'll post my xorg tomorrow. However, my mouse section looks just like yours, but it's a Mouse0 instead of a Mouse1, which shouldn't matter.

The touchpad works the same as the mouse. When the mouse fails, I try the touchpad (both are enabled at the same time), and I still can't click on the spots that were unclickable with the usb mouse.

Another update; I tried a Slax CD, and while the mouse wasn't as troublesome as it was in my Slack install, it did periodically have the same symptoms, but never to the point that everything stopped working. Oftentimes, I'd open an application, and I couldn't close it without using alt+F4. However, in Slax I could still get to the "start" menu, but eventually everything stops working with Slackware.

Well, I have good news and bad news.

It's definitely a hardware issue; I'm having the same problems with WinXP. That's Slack, Slax, and WinXP. Definitely has to be my mouse. It seems that once the usb mouse starts acting up, the garbage it passes to the mouse device messes up the laptop touchpad for a bit. Eventually, using the touchpad will restabilize itself.

So good news is Slack has another chance. Bad news is I need to buy another mouse. The mouse is pretty old, and has taken a beating, so it's probably just its time.

Thanks everyone for your help, but it looks like I solved this one.

Yep, just gave it another try. It appears my theory is correct. My USB mouse was interfering with my touchpad. I disconnected it, and reinstalled Slack 11. Everything works just fine.

I'm so happy right now. Glee.

Good to hear it's all sorted out and working.