Diagnosing mouse in text mode (was Re: Gnome file window keeps popping up)
- From: Allan Adler <ara@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: 16 Jul 2006 12:07:43 -0400
Allan Adler <ara@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
The particular computer I mentioned is a HP Pavilion.[snip]
I think that if Kudzu keeps coming up during bootup and telling me the mouse
is not attached, even though it is, that the problem is more likely to lie
with the board. [snip] Unfortunately, I don't have another machine that I
can use to test mice.
I got the answers I needed on comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.misc. The solution
was to use a DOS boot disk containing a mouse driver, a copy of qbasic and
a mouse demo program written in qbasic to test the mouse. It determined
that the mouse was not working; in fact, error messages from the mouse
driver already showed that. I replaced the mouse with another PS/2 mouse
from another computer and the demo showed that this one was working (the other
computer was running no programs that could test the mouse before I acquired
the DOS boot disk, etc.). Then I booted Linux with this replacement mouse
and tried it out again in Gnome, where it didn't work. I ran
/usr/sbin/mouseconfig --expert
and after some experimentation with the mouse type and starting x, I finally
got it to work by telling mouseconfig that it was a
Logitech MouseMan/FirstMouse (PS/2). So, now I'm operational again.
What I'd like to know is how I could have made the same easy diagnostics
of the mouse using what was available to me under RH 7.1 Linux, which is
what is running on the HP Pavilion. Of course, starting Gnome and realizing
that the mouse doesn't work is a kind of diagnostic, but that diagnostic failed
to distinguish between the defective mouse and the replacement that worked
until I'd experimented enough with mouseconfig. By way of contrast, there was
no difficulty or subtlety in testing them under DOS (or rather FreeDOS).
Let me put my question a little differently and a little more concisely:
suppose I am using Linux in text mode and I want to diagnose the mouse
without leaving text mode. How do I do it?
I have the book, Linux Device Drivers, 2d ed., and noticed that its index
doesn't mention mice. If there is some place in that book that would have
helped me with this question, I'd also like to know that. I did find a file
named mouse_drv.o and tried, in text mode and as root, to install it with
insmod, but got an error message about how it couldn't determine which kernel
it had been compiled with. I'll see if I can find the source to mouse_drv.o
to see what it nominally does.
--
Ignorantly,
Allan Adler <ara@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
* Disclaimer: I am a guest and *not* a member of the MIT CSAIL. My actions and
* comments do not reflect in any way on MIT. Also, I am nowhere near Boston.
.
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