ctrl/alt f1 solves my touchpad problem - why?
 

Mandrake 8.2 on Sony Vaio.

I screwed up my touchpad and usbmouse set up by choosing to run usb.init on boot and have been regretting it ever since. I've managed to get mytouchpad back (partially anyway). I don't know how or why but when I boot and get my X splahscreen the touchpad goes bannas pulling to the left - can't do anything with it. When I use ctrl/alt/F1 and then switch back using ctrl/alt/F3 all is well again with the touchpad. The usb is still not working. why does does the ctrl/alt thing solve this problem and how can I get back to the original situation when the touchpad was working on the X splashscreen first time?

could there possibly be a change made to your /etc/X11/XF86Config file in the mouse configuration section? That it is being solved by ctrl-alt-f3 -> ctrl-alt-f1 -> ctrl-alt-f3 sounds rather odd to me and I've never seen anything quite like that. What does the usb.init script do exactly?

Right. I did seem to have screwed up my XF86Config-4 file. I've managed to fix that and usb is working again although I still have to ctrl/alt/f1 to get the touchpad working. Not sure why F3 gets me back to the console as opposed to F7. ucb.init is a script that is supposed to manage the loading of usb drivers. I always have it switched off though and switched it on this morning whilst trying to getting hot plug working. That's what caused all my woes. I've switched it back off again. I just need to solve my touchpad problem and I'll be back to where I left off - 8 hours ago! Thanks for your help.

F7 is not universal. If you look at your /etc/inittab file it will define how many consoles (text consoles) to start. Typical practice has been to create 6 consoles (F1 - F6) which leaves F7 - F12 for virtual (X11) consoles. However with more and more linux systems being single user desktop systems the practice is changing for slightly added security. In other words in /etc/inittab there are probably only two text consoles being started (F1 - F2) and thus leaving the rest for virtual consoles.

"I did seem to have screwed up my XF86Config-4 file. I've managed to fix that and usb is working again"

XF86Config-4 affected your USB? What does the 'mouse' device section of XF86Config-4 look like?

# **********************************************************************
# Pointer section
# **********************************************************************

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Mouse1"
Driver "mouse"
Option "Protocol" "IMPS/2"
Option "Device" "/dev/mouse"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection


Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Mouse1"
Driver "mouse"
Option "Device" "/dev/mouse"
Option "Protocol" "PS/2"
Option "Emulate3Buttons" "off"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection

sorry make that:

# **********************************************************************
# Pointer section
# **********************************************************************

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Mouse1"
Driver "mouse"
Option "Protocol" "IMPS/2"
Option "Device" "/dev/mouse"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection


Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Mouse1"
Driver "mouse"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
Option "Protocol" "PS/2"
Option "Emulate3Buttons" "off"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection [/B][/QUOTE]

you said this is a laptop right? The protocol section of the first one is set to 'IMPS/2'... this is for scroll mice. So unless the mouse on your laptop has a scroll wheel I would get rid of that entire first section. Plus I'm not an expert by any means on XF86Configs... however I'm pretty sure that two inputdevice sections with the same identifier 'Mouse1' is bad. I would remove the first entry such that the only mouse section is defined as follows...

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Mouse1"
Driver "mouse"
Option "device" "/dev/mouse"
Option "Protocol" "PS/2"
Option "Emulate3Buttons" "on"
EndSection

hope that helps,
jpbarto