hi,

Few days ago, I've been confronted to a curious enigma with my mouse. I explain:

When I booted my debian, once gnome was launched, the cursor didn't want to move (neither 'click' by the way). After several reboot and dpkg-reconfigure xfree86-xserver, I decided to try under XP: it worked!. So it wasn't a physical trouble with my hardware. Then I booted a Kanotix live CD (sort of knoppix...): mouse cursor didn't move here too. Then I booted ubuntu: mouse was working.

And suddenly, I saw a little appendix connected to my PC by an usb port: an usb key! At this moment, in a quarter of second, all becomes limpid:

- In the fstab of my debian, I mount /dev/sda1 on boot (even if no hardware is connected)
- Kanotix mounts every storage device it detects
- XP, well...
- and in the fstab of ubuntu I don't ask to mount /dev/sda1.

So I unplug the usb key and reboot debian: mouse cursor moves!

Well okay... but why? Do you have an idea?.
Thank you.

Maz

At a guess, your /dev/mouse entry is linked to whatever USB device is first plugged in. So if your USB key gets detected first, the mouse will be pointed the wrong way.

Check how the mouse is defined as a device.

My mouse is linked to /dev/psaux. I could check if it's possible to mount the usb key with /dev/psaux when I connect usb key before startup (I'm not in front of my PC). It seems strange but why not...

I use hotplug too: I'll look what it's doing on startup.

The problem does not happen with whatever usb device: I had a usb dsl modem connected few months ago, and I didn't have this trouble.

Thank you for your reply.