I have ruled out the mouse as a gpm problem. I suspect it is some conf file, but I dont know where or how the program xinit tries to resolve the mouse. I installed the system originally and the mouse worked then. I had some corruption problems so I reloaded over my system trying to fix the funny pointers. it seems ok. until I invoke ANY window system. the mouse does not appear and I get to do a hard reboot and fixup.

I thought it might be the /dev/pointers. look good to me.
I thought it might be xorg.conf. I checked all of them. they are normal. what is the mechanism. I really need to know so I can repair my system. I did nothing to change the system installed from slackware13.0 I dont care where or how I saw a problem with builtins. why doesnt the vanilla system work?


josephus

I think you'll need to provide more information for anyone to be able to help. The xorg.conf is the most likely source of trouble, but if the same xorg configuration was working before the problem could be that the mouse isn't being detected at all. Check both dmesg and the Xorg.0.log to see if the mouse is being recognized.

Also, is the problem just the mouse? You state the you are having to do a hard reboot, but you should be able to switch to another TTY (using ctrl-alt-F2, or ctrl-alt-F3, etc) and still have full control of the system from the keyboard. Switching to TTY1 (ctrl-alt-F1) should show the most recent messages/warnings from the window manger, which might provide some explanation of why the mouse isn't being recognized.

actually I need to know how the mechanism works. how does the xinit resolve the pointer. In my system there is a fault. I cant find that fault. I installed this system from scratch. on a new disk.

I had a problem with fvwm not finding and running programs, In fact it would die the horrible death. so I tried to reinstall the system with the CD set. In theory it should have helped. I dont know. the MOUSE does not work in ANY windows system. so the problem is deeper. And I need to know how the mouse is resolved. I will be working with Fvwm2 when I get the mouse running. I have used it for many years.


I know that xinit uses a script. it looks good to me. so I am asking for help I can provide more data if required.


josephus

Hmmm... I'm still not completely sure I'm answering the right question and I'm not an expert on the internals, but I can try to explain what I understand of the hardware is resolved.

First, the operating system needs to recognize the hardware. Unless there is hardware problem (bad mouse, bad PS/2 or USB port) or the mouse needs special drivers, the mouse should be recognized during the boot process. There should be one or two lines in the /var/log/messages file indicating that the mouse has been found. This same message can be retrieved using the dmesg command, which will list all of the messages since the last boot that are related to hardware. To see all the messages related the mouse, use the command:

dmesg | grep mouse

You should get something like:
[xxxxxxx] mousedev: PS/2 mouse device common for all mice
or:
mice: PS/2 mouse device common for all mice

If the OS appears to be recognizing the mouse properly, try running gpm to verify that the mouse works at the command prompt.

The window systems should all use the Xorg server. The configuration files will be in /etc/X11. The main file to look at is xorg.conf. What needs to be in this file will depend on what version of the xorg software you have (I'm not sure what version of Xorg you have with Slackware 13.0 - all of my systems have either older versions of Slackware or are running 13.37/current).

Older versions of the X software needed to be explicitly told where to look for the mouse. In these case the xorg.conf file should have a section that looks something like:

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Mouse0"
Driver "mouse"
Option "Protocol" "ExplorerPS/2"
Option "Device" "/dev/mouse"
EndSection

There should also be a section titled: Section "ServerLayout"
This section should include a line that looks like:
InputDevice "Mouse0" "CorePointer"

The important line in the xorg.conf file is the one with "/dev/mouse". This is usually the device where the mouse is located, but you should check in /dev to see that /dev/mouse exists and if it is a link that it points to an existing device node.

If you have a newer version of X the xorg.conf file will usually only include information on the monitor and video card. In this case, the X software will be relying on HAL to recognize most of the hardware, including the mouse.

I'm not sure I can help if HAL is misconfigured, but you can check that HAL is running with the command "ps -ef". There should be a number of hald processes running including one that is reported as:
/usr/sbin/hald --daemon=yes

If the HAL daemon is not running, check that its init script (/etc/rc.d/rc.hald) is set to be executable.

If this does not help, post what version of the xorg software is on your system and what the input sections of your xorg.cong file look like.

How about the obvious first source of information: the contents of /var/log/Xorg.0.log.

It should tell you all sorts of things, including what input devices that it found as well as any errors that happened.

ok the gpm mouse and pointers look sane to me. I cant see any erors from them.

however Xorg.0.log says it expected HAL to provide the devices and reports it cannot find keyboard and pointer. this is what my problem seems to be. I am not sure but I dont know how to repair this problem. my system mouse works fine. no problems with the gpm utility. it is apparently the HAL utility that is corrupted and I dont have a clue how to to fix that. coding yes, program yes, even scripts yes. but a system function that runs once is out of my leage. mainly because I know the sequence has changed between versiona of slackware. anything I thought i knew is wrong. :{


josephus

There are few things you could check...

Is the HAL daemon (hald) running?
Use "ps -ef | grep hald". The command should list the deamon process described in my post above, the hald-runner process, and a number of hald-addon-* processes. I'm not sure what your next steps should be if the daemon is running.

If the daemon isn't running, check that the HAL package is installed, by either:
slackpkg search hal (which should show [ installed ] in front of the hal package)
or by checking in /var/log/packages.

If it is installed, you might want to reinstall the package just in case the installation was corrupted.

If is installed, but not running, check that the initialization script (/etc/rc.d/rc.hald) is executable. The script should be owned by root and the permissions set to 755. When the script is executable, it should run automatically during the boot process.

If the script is already executable, but hald is not running, try running the script from the command line and see what errors are reported. After running the script, check the syslog and messages log for additional error messages. If this doesn't get things working, post any errors that you get from the script.

In a terminal as root type pkgtool and see if that will help...there are many solutions to your problem,its just a case of finding one,as a Slacker I prefer the easy ones,so usually I use the NVIDIA driver that fixes loads. usually !!!

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What are these pointers you keep writing about? Are you talking about the on-screen mouse cursor? Some pointing device? What?

Does your window manager accept input from the keyboard? One way to tell is to press <Ctrl>-<Alt>-<Backspace> at the same time to kill X, rather than do a hard reboot as you've been doing.

I've sometimes had the problem of no responses to keyboard or mouse when running X while trying to configure it. Here's what fixed it for me, but there's no guarantee it will solve your problem. Try adding the following line in your ServerFlags section of /etc/X11/xorg.conf.

AllowEmptyInput "false"

If you don't have a ServerFlags section, just precede the previous line with

Section "ServerFlags"

and follow the AllowEmptyInput line with

EndSection

You should be able to see how it's done from other sections in xorg.conf, or in the xorg.conf man page.

Let us know if that works.

the Hald was the problem it was not executable. I set it to 755 and it boots normally

the mouse and keyboard will work. But Seamonkey is bogus and will do a hard crash if it runs. there are serveral processes that have this feature. I am a standalone linux box. and need someway to find a source for Seamonkey. I will check Netscape too. it should also run. once that happens I can download a source for seamonkey. then I can do similar things for each of the FREEXE list. when certain programs run, they freeze and the system freezes with them.