Inquiring the mouse type.
 

Hi: any way to make the system inquire what is the mouse type? My mouse is a two-button one with a wheel in the middle between the buttons and an optical scanner below. The connector is PS/2 type.

I tried gpm with and
but while another mouse with a ps2 connector works this one doesn't. However, I'm sure it is physically OK. Then, is there a utility that asks the mouse what type it is?

Are you sure /dev/mouse is the actual location of that particular mouse? Try

ls -l /dev/input/by-id
or
ls -l /dev/input/by-path

and see if the listing there tells you where the mouse is actually registered.

I have no /dev/input/by-id. In /dev/input/by-path there are ...event-kbd and ...event-spkr but no mouse. But I have the /dev/input/mice and /dev/input/mouse0 files.

My distribution is Slackware 12.0.

Try xinput and to know the options type man xinput.

Also check lspci -knn. Include the -v or -vv options to include the verbosity.

Also check the messages about your mouse from dmesg.

More generally about the PS/2 mice see this.

Also, bear in mind that:

• according to above resource, PS2 mouse are not supposed to be hot-plugged: don't plug the mouse in while the system is running.
• Slackware 12.0 still uses HAL and that could make hard for people here to help you (this is more a general statement as hot plug doesn't apply here).
• Slackware 12.0 ships udev-111, but recent Slackware releases ship udev-182. There could have been some changes in the /dev tree.