HP ps/2 optical mouse , advanced help needed
 

Greetings,

Been dialing in Ubunt 6.06 and I'm stuck here at this same problem. I have a ps/2 mouse that for all intents and purposes *should* be working.

A little background:
-HP Pavilion n3250
-AMD k6-2 @ ~475mHz
-has working Synaptics touchpad
-ps/2 mouse works in BIOS, port and mouse physically functional
-kernel-version 2.6.15.26-386
-xorg.conf:
Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Configured Mouse"
Driver "mouse"
Option "CorePointer"
Option "Device" "/dev/ttyS0"
Option "Protocol" "Microsoft"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
Option "Emulate3Buttons" "true"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Synaptics Touchpad"
Driver "synaptics"
Option "SendCoreEvents" "true"
Option "Device" "/dev/psaux"
Option "Protocol" "auto-dev"
Option "HorizScrollDelta" "0"
EndSection

-for Driver "Microsoft", I have tried Imps/2, Explorer(whatever), auto-dev, upper and lower cases, etc.
-ps ax | grep /usr/sbin/ (looking for:/usr/sbin/gpm -m /dev/mouse -t imps2) output:
3924 ? Ss 0:00 /usr/sbin/gdm
3940 ? S 0:00 /usr/sbin/gdm
3963 ? Ssl 0:00 /usr/sbin/hpiod
3967 ? S 0:00 python /usr/sbin/hpssd
4014 ? Ss 0:02 /usr/sbin/cupsd
4041 ? Ss 0:00 /usr/sbin/apmd -P /etc/apm/apmd_proxy --proxy-timeout 30
4114 ? Ss 0:32 /usr/sbin/hald
4409 ? Ss 0:00 /usr/sbin/sdpd
4470 ? Ss 0:00 /usr/sbin/atd
4483 ? Ss 0:00 /usr/sbin/cron
7303 pts/0 R+ 0:00 grep /usr/sbin/

No entry for: /usr/sbin/gpm -m /dev/mouse -t imps2

-lsmod | grep psmouse:
psmouse 36100 0

Now another interesting thing is I don't seem to have a mouseconfig app available at cli. (nor do I have alsaconf...annoying.) Nor do I have a choice in the xorg reconfig app to choose my type of mouse device. It does ask what driver, but not USB v. ps/2 or anything.
Been working this one on and off for about 2 weeks now. Any help is appreciated. But from what I've seen from reading to this point I'll have to get a USB hub and a USB mouse. Either that or recompile kernel by hand. No better teacher than necessity, eh?

Jelly

Xorg.conf will generally look something like this.I've never seen this before.I would change the relevant lines to match the above, restart X and see how it goes.

Well, thanks for playing our game. We have some nice parting gifts for you backstage.

"/dev/mouse" doesn't exist, so...X-server crash.

"ttyS0" I got from another post on the Ubuntu forums, I think. And I'm pretty sure it's in my system somewhere as well. That is to say, I saw it listed in association with the mouse in question. How? Too much info, can't recall exactly.

Seems like I've read every post and how-to on this issue that I can find with no luck. I'm even pretty sure it "works" as is. For example, if I move it around really fast, not touching any buttons, a "right-click" menu will show up and the pointer might move to the corner or edge of the screen.

Installed gpm this morning, so "ps ax" shows this:

4333 ? Ss 0:00 /usr/sbin/gpm -m /dev/input/mice -t exps2

but it acted the same before I installed gpm.

Any other suggestions?

J

Still can't find the original post mentioning "/dev/ttyS0", but this:

dmesg | grep tty

shows this:

[ 34.095141] serial8250: ttyS0 at I/O 0x3f8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A
[ 34.118720] 00:0d: ttyS0 at I/O 0x3f8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A

where 0x3f8 is the setting (address) for the serial port as set in the BIOS.

Really, it's a simple ps/2 mouse. Why all this complexity? Could it be the touchpad interfering? How can I get them to play nice together?

J

I'm no expert on xorg.conf, but I just noticed the Device line. I could be wrong but I'm guessing xorg.conf should like like this for you.The difference being the "Device" line. The option /dev/input/mouse" rather then "/dev/mouse" may be the trick.

In /dev/input/ I have "mice" and "mouse0" (also: "event0/1/2"--thats 3 files and "ts0") for choices. I should have mentioned in my original post that I had already tried to adjust the "Device" line to the suggestion you made, and to "mouse0" among others from posts here and the Ubuntu forums... with no luck so far.

Thanks for the support thus far,

J

Earlier in the thread, you mentioned that the touchpad is working. This shouldn't cause any issues, but you might try commenting that out and focus on the ps/2 mouse by alone. I'm not real familiar with Ubuntu, and I'm about out of ideas. I am curious what the problem is though. Hope you can get it fixed.

Yeah, I sorta gave up, bit the bullet and bought a USB hub and a USB mouse. It worked immediately, of course. But that's $40 I'd rather ahve spent on something else, not somehting I already had. Namely, an optical mouse. Near as I can tell, it has to have something to do with the way the chip in a PS/2 roller mouse sends messages to the xserver (or wherever it goes) and how a PS/2 optical mouse chip accomplishes the same task. I noticed sporadic "micro-functionality"-it would move or act like a button was pressed when I moved it all over the place real fast. Made me think it just wouldn't stay in sync., so I looked in the system logs for instances of that. What I found was was a long list of mouse resyncing, but it was all tied to the touchpad.

I'll try to fix it again, but I'm burned out on it and have a work-around now. It really suprised me how few responses I got to this, when I see the problem all the time on the boards. In fairness, I'll say that most seem to be fixed by modifying the xorg.conf file, mine just wasn't that problem, I guess. I also found it curious how there are certain basic apps (mouseconfig, alsaconf...) missing from this installation of Ubuntu, that according to the boards should be there. Heck, I even got a link for alsaconf in my Applications menu list. Don't work, but it's there. Points to a command that doesn't exist on this system, but it's supposed to. Got all the alsa associated files that say it should be there... Not there though.

Any rate, it's still better, if only on principle, than the alternative...pirating Microsoft OSes. LOL

J