I think it all started after a power outage. I checked all the partitions, they were clean. I don't think I started X for a day or 2 after that. I go to start X and I get one of those (EE) cannot open device /dev/input/mice or something like that. Not sure exactly, ran an apt update since then and xorg was upgraded so the message changed slightly.

I figure the power outage fried the mouse or the ps2 port or something, but I couldn't get a usb mouse to work either. I booted a puppy and a dsl cd and both of them found my mouse and it worked fine.

X -configure says Xorg is not able to detect your mouse

mdetect can't find anything

when I cat /dev/input/mice, mouse0,1 or /dev/psaux I get : No such device


So can some one tell me what the bloody heck happened to my mouse??

-----------------

Xorg.0.log (output)

(EE) xf86OpenSerial: Cannot open device /dev/input/mice
No such device.
(EE) Configured Mouse: cannot open input device
(EE) PreInit failed for input device "Configured Mouse"


X -configure (output)

Xorg is not able to detect your mouse.
Edit the file and correct the Device.


in the syslog there's the usb mouse
localhost kernel: usbcore: registered new driver usbmouse
drivers/usb/input/usbmouse.c: v1.6:USB HID Boot Protocol mouse driver


in /var/log/messages I can see the dang ps2 mouse
localhost kernel: input: ImPS/2 Generic Wheel Mouse on isa0060/serio1


WTFZ0r5!!!11
stupid mouse

the hardware is good, it all works under live cds. I know debian detects both the mice. So why on earth can't X find them??? I ran dpg-reconfigure xserver-xorg till my eyes bled but it never helped. In fact for some reason when I turned on the frame buffer in there when I would start X I would fail to a black screen. I would have to ssh in to reboot without hard rebooting it. weird

box specs
old Dell 1ghz P3 pos
2.6.11 686 Debian unstable (booting with the 2.6.8 kernel had the same results)
512 ram
nvidia geforce2 running the generic 'nv' driver for now, since the last apt upgrade updated the damn legacy driver again, till I recompile the module.
a microsoft 5 button optical mouse -or-
some gateway 3 button ps2 mouse


I tried everything I know, for the love of god somebody please help me.

Are you running gpm, console mouse driver? It is what creates the /dev/input/mice device. If not, you should figure out how to restart it. Perhaps
if your distro is anything like RH/Fedora.
It may be somewhere in /etc/init.d/

Sorry for being so vague. I don't want to give you a bunch of instructions that are wrong for your distro.

--- rod.

I did not have gpm so I installed it on my system.
but when I /etc/init.d/gpm start
I get:
Starting mouse interface server: gpm./gpm: line 52: /dev/input/mice: No such device

where o where is my mouse device hiding?


hm... when I plug in my gamepad it gets that "usb 1-1: new low speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 4" message same as when I plug my usb mouse in. But when I "cat /dev/input/js0" I get the same "No such device" message. So it looks like it's not just the mouse, but all input devices other than the keyboard. What the heck is going on???

I thought this looked important

/proc/bus/input/devices
I: Bus=0011 Vendor=0001 Product=0001 Version=ab41
N: Name="AT Translated Set 2 keyboard"
P: Phys=isa0060/serio0/input0
H: Handlers=kbd
B: EV=120013
B: KEY=4 2000000 3802078 f840d001 f2ffffdf ffefffff ffffffff fffffffe
B: MSC=10
B: LED=7

I: Bus=0011 Vendor=0002 Product=0005 Version=0000
N: Name="ImPS/2 Generic Wheel Mouse"
P: Phys=isa0060/serio1/input0
H: Handlers=
B: EV=7
B: KEY=70000 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
B: REL=103

I: Bus=0003 Vendor=045e Product=0039 Version=0300
N: Name="Microsoft Microsoft 5-Button Mouse with IntelliEye(TM)"
P: Phys=usb-0000:00:1f.2-2/input0
H: Handlers=
B: EV=7
B: KEY=1f0000 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
B: REL=103

Every single thing I try I get mouse not detected our device does not exist. What else can I try?

Do you have the "mouseconfig" script installed? You could try running that to recreate the character device files that are evidently missing from your system.

Of course mouseconfig is designed for Redhat, but it might be useful here.

is it possible your mouse is not working?
try plugging in another one, just to be sure. also try different type (ps/2 and usb). i had a brand new mouse stop working a few weeks ago, and it was the last thing i though of checking (being new and all) .....

The OP said that the mouse works fine with liveCDs, so there isn't a hardware problem. Also the device files are missing from /dev so this is where the problem most likely lies. Does Debian have a package that can be installed that will create the appropriate nodes?

I'll go make a post in the Debian section linking to this thread. Maybe they can be of some help.

They had me run lsmod and that quickly showed that the necessary mouse modules were missing. I can't even begin to imagine how that happened, even considering the power failure. I guess the important thing is we figured it out, but I would really like somone to explain how that can happen in the first place.