My laptop's hard drive just recently died in horrific ways. Since my installation of Debia Linux on my desktop computer has been going so well, I decided to install Debian on the laptop rather than going through the tedious process of installing WinXP from the five restore CDs and then removing all of that kruft that I never want but gets installed anyway.

Everything seems to be fine with one exception: the mouse. The HP Pavillion ze5300 series uses a Synaptics Touchpad PS/2 mouse and I'm not entirely sure how to get it working. It's definitely not functioning, since the X server "failed to initialize core devices" and died. I found something that claims to be a Linux Synaptics Touchpad driver (http://web.telia.com/~u89404340/touchpad/) and downloaded the latest version (0.14.4) but I can't seem to get it to compile under my 2.6.14.6 kernel. Upon request, I can list the result from the make process, but it's very long.

I did notice, however, that it complained about not being able to find an XFree86 header. The INSTALL file claimed that it didn't need the headers under XFree86 4.3 (which I have) but I downloaded the XFree86 source anyway in case that woul]d make a difference. It didn't.

The Gentoo Linux Wiki (http://gentoo-wiki.com/HARDWARE_Synaptics_Touchpad) states that the Synaptics Touchpad driver isn't strictly necessary to get the touchpad working, just to access the cute special features. Is this true? The only thing I require from the touchpad is that it works and that I can turn it off, since an external USB mouse is usually connected to this laptop anyway. However, the mouse does not appear to be working whatsoever; catting /dev/input/mice spits out an error: "No such device."

Nonetheless, dmesg reports

Does anyone have any clue what's going on? The touchpad isn't working, I know that much... but since dmesg sees it and /dev/input/mice doesn't, I'm at a loss.

Thanks for reading through. Cheers!

EDIT:

Oh, by the way... Knoppix v4.0.2 works just fine, mouse and all.

Can you post the relevant sections of your Xfree conf file? The core pointers section and the server layout section? I have a ze4315 with the synaptics touchpad and a usb mouse and I'm able to use one or both. For the usb mouse your problem could be missing kernel support for hid. Check your kernel config in the USB input devices section. Mine looks like this

I think I should be clearer: I haven't tried a USB mouse because I wanted to get the touchpad working first. The section of my XF86-Config is as follws:

To my knowledge, the USB mouse would work just fine... it's the touchpad what's giving me problems. Did you have to do anything special for your touchpad? The ze4300 and ze5300 series laptops are very similar.

Your config looks a bit different from mine. I don't use the Emulate3Buttons and the CorePointer setting is in my Server Layout section. This is how mine was before installing the synaptics driver:

touchpad:
usb mouse:
from Server Layout section:
My "/dev/mouse" is actually a symlink to /dev/psaux and the "Mouse0" "CorePointer" is commented to allow both to function together.

With what you have I think you should be getting at least some response. If it's not even showing signs of having power I would check the kernel config and make sure PS/2 support is enabled. Also, if the gdm service is loaded during startup a mouse cursor should move when you're at the commandline (not in X).

Sorry for the delay; I haven't been messing with the laptop much as I don't use it frequently of late.

I think the mouse has power; the little on/off light over the touchpad is on. From what I understand, though, that might be part of the keyboard and not necessarily have anything to do with the mouse directly. psmouse is loaded and I'm almost certain that the ze5300 series has a PS/2 touchpad. However, catting /dev/psaux or /dev/input/mice or /dev/input/mouse0 produces a "no such device" error. GPM isn't working.

Is there any additional information I can provide? I'm effectively getting nothing from the mouse at all.

The button above the touchpad is a hardware feature not controlled by the OS. It just dawned on me you mentioned X "dies" with a message about failing to load core devices. Do you have the lines in the Server Layout section of your XFree.conf like mine. Since your mouse is called "Configured Mouse" it should be

InputDevice "ConfiguredMouse" "CorePointer"

/dev/mouse (on mine) is a symlink to /dev/psaux, which is another symlink to /dev/misc/psaux. Catting them does nothing for me. Use ls -l to verify that the devices exist. If they don't it could indicate missing kernel support. Here's my input device section from my current kernel 2.6.15.5 config in case it'll help.

The Gentoo wiki you looked at is right. The synaptic driver is not required for the device to work. The synaptic driver will enable scrolling, sensitivity adjustment, and back/forward.