[NBLUG/talk] mobile mouse question

Jeremy Turner jeremy at linuxwebguy.com
Fri Dec 12 10:51:03 PST 2003


On Sun, 2003-12-07 at 11:33, Steve Smith wrote:
> I just bought a small USB mouse for the laptop.  I'd like to
> use it or the trackpad without configuring the laptop
> eachtime I plug the USB mouse in.

I don't know if you ever got an answer to your question.  If you're
using Redhat, kudzu should auto-detect it.  In fact, most of the newer
distros should auto-detect it.

The manual way is to edit your XF86Config[-4] file (usually in /etc or
/etc/X11) and add in a new section for your mouse like so:

Section "InputDevice"
	Identifier  "USBMouse"
	Driver      "mouse"
	Option	    "Protocol" "IMPS/2"
	Option	    "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
	Option      "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection

For your PS/2 trackpoint/touchpad you should have this:

Section "InputDevice"
	Identifier  "PS2Mouse"
	Driver      "mouse"
	Option	    "Protocol" "IMPS/2"
	Option	    "Device" "/dev/psaux"
EndSection

The identifiers may/will be different.

In the serverlayout section at the top, you should add a new InputDevice
so that your new USB mouse is listed:

Section "ServerLayout"
	Identifier     "XFree86 Configured"
	Screen      0  "Screen0" 0 0
	InputDevice    "PS2Mouse" "CorePointer"
	InputDevice    "USBMouse" "AlwaysCore"
	InputDevice    "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
EndSection

Again, the 'PS2Mouse' and 'USBMouse' keywords are arbitrary.  As long as
they match the Identifier section, you're okay.

I ran into a problem back when I used Redhat, and I didn't know what
happened at the time, so I ended up reformatting and reinstalling to fix
it.  When I plugged in my USB mouse, kudzu detected it and installed it,
but made it the 'CorePointer' in the ServerLayout.  When I started up my
laptop and the mouse was not connected, XFree86 went crazy because it
couldn't fine one of it's core devices, the mouse.  I don't always want
the USB mouse plugged into my laptop!  Anyways, the fix is to use
'AlwaysCore' on the devices that you will be removing and adding so that
XFree86 won't have a cow when they're not there.  Keep the
touchpad/trackpoint as the CorePointer.

Hope that helps,

Jeremy

-- 
Jeremy Turner <jeremy at linuxwebguy.com>
The LinuxWebGuy
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