I'm using Slackware 9.1 on an IBM Thinkpad, and the mouse on the laptop works fine, but I can't get my USB mouse to work on the kernel I compiled. It works on the bare.i kernel though. The error I see when it's booting up is modprobe:modprobe:Can't locate module mousedev. Should I have compiled mouse support as a module instead of directly into the kernel?

No, it can be built in or modules. Uncomment mousedev in /etc/rc.d/rc.modules and see
if that gets it going.
My USB mouse didn't work with the Slack 9.1 bare.i (2.4.22) kernel, so I just uncommented
those 2 lines and it works fine.

For my part I enabled USB things as modules but I give you relevant part of my .config to let you see needed features for usb mouse.
All other USB features are not set in my system, mouse works well

Well I got it to work, but I ended up finding the config file for the bare.i kernel and then just taking out what I was sure I didn't need out of there using menuconfig, and it worked when I booted up. I tried both of ya'lls suggestions, but I was never able to get anything to work. However, I am now having an error whenever I am booting up.
insmod: /lib/modules/2.4.22/kernel/dirvers/usb/host/uhci.o: unresolved symbol...
This message repeats about 50 or so times wtih something different after unresolved symbol everytime. Anyone have any ideas?

After you changed the kernel config file, did you finish compiling the kernel? And then did you rerun lilo, or did you just reboot?

Yeah. I ran make dep, make clean, make bzImage, make modules, and then I catted the bzImage to /boot, and then copied the system map, and edited the lilo.conf file and then ran /sbin/lilo.

It that's exact, then you didn't run make modules_install as root. That's what puts them into your kernel.

Dang, I didn't even think of that. The kernel installation instructions on slackware.org dont have that part in there, so I just never bothered doing it. So I guess I need to recompile the kernel again, or can I run that after I've already booted the kernel up.

I didn't think you were correct, but you are - those instructions don't say to run "make modules_install", but they do tell you how to get modules loaded if you read it carefully.

Well, I'll give you a link to the best kernel compile guide I've read.
http://www.digitalhermit.com/linux/K...ild-HOWTO.html
But let me also say that the Newbie Guide To Compiling A Kernel! by DrOzz here on LQ is very good, also.

AFAIK you can run "make modules_install" as root and then run "lilo" and reboot and you'll get them. However, since you'd rather be safe than sorry, just login as root, then cd to /usr/src/linux and run "make oldconfig". This will read the defaults from your existing .config and rewrite necessary links and files. Since you've not made any changes, it should just rip through to the end. Then, issue the following command
bash-2.05b# make dep; make clean; make bzImage;make modules;make modules_install
and go take a nap or something. It will run the whole process unless you have an error, which you shouldn't. Then you'll need to copy your bzImage and System.map as before. You should be able to scroll back through your bash commands with the up arrow key and find them, so you can just hit enter.

Hope you get it working properly, and don't forget to read one of those good kernel guides. I would suggest backing up any important data as a precaution before recompiling a kernel - always. It's just good practice.

Well I did exactly what you said, and now I don't get the uhci error, but the mouse doesn't work anymore. And now im getting an insmod error with the i810_rn or something like that. When I get some time I'm going to read those kernel guides and give it another shot. Thanks for all the help.