I have NO working mouse and I really need some help with this. I have 2 mice and one USB Wacom tablet and none are working. Read on.....
I have 2 Logitech MouseMan Marble+ (1 USB and 1 PS/2) neither one of them are detected upon boot, nor is my Wacom Intuos II tablet (but that is not the real issue at the moment) to which I am booted into a "non interactive" session.
When I first loaded up the OS my PS/2 mouse worked fine but when I re-booted in, after setting my desktop up the way I like it...... BAM NO MOUSE!! :( That is such BS!! I have no idea how to access the command line from with-in the OS (if that's possible with no mouse, though there HAS to be). In Windows if you have no mouse you are at least given use of the tab and enter key's of the keyboard to navigate the desktop, this does not seem to be the case in Linux so there I sit unable to do anything except come back here to Windows to type this out. On a side note, I have supported and tried out Mandrake for about the last 6 versions, each one a bit better. So I have SOME knowledge but I DO admit that I am busy and mostly use Windows for most of my needs, so I am very rusty to anything to do with the Command Line. Hopefully one of these days I will be able to switch to Linux all the way but for now.................... let's leave it at that!! :D
I would very much appreciate some help in fixing this mouse issue. I have posted in the Mandrake Club forums but they are not paying any attention to most posts having to deal with mice and the related issues for some odd reason!! :( So I am here asking for your assitance.
I went as far as to do a Mandrake Upgrade, using the setup CD's, which, at that moment in time, allowed me to choose new drivers for my frozen and unusable mouse (the PS/2 is the one I really like the most) and all was fine during the set up but once back in Mandrake I was booted into another "non interactive" session and NO MOUSE!!!
Why Mandrake does not invest more time into making sure that regardless of what is connected to the ports WILL have some sort of a driver loaded that WILL work with the said device. Mice are pretty important to us "click and go" types and this is just not acceptable and renders the OS unusable for me and my needs!!
I do have Midnight Commander loaded up because that's the one command line text editor that I understand a tiny little bit. So if someone could PLEASE give me a step by step and guide me to where I need to go to edit what I need to edit in order have my mouse working again I would be very grateful. Promise I'll take notes and keep them safe in my Linux folder!! :)
Sorry to rant and rave!!
Thanks
Richard ;)
Peace
Satanic Atheist
10-29-2003, 03:37 PM
Dead mouse, eh? I suggest a taxidermist if you want to keep it forever. If not, you could always bury it.
Since I do some contract work for the Scottish Water here I recommend you do NOT flush dead mice down the toilet. Improper flushing of objects and dead animals down a toilet will damage the Wastewater filtrations screens and equipment. These are expensive, so your water rates will hike.
Anyway, to get to the command prompt, on boot, when it asks you which OS/kernel to load, you should be able to access the command prompt so you can append information to boot loader. If you try:
Linux 3
You should end up in console mode with the login prompt.
If you can't get to this, from the X login screen, do CTRL+ALT+F1 to switch to command line mode and log in there.
If Virtual Terminal 1 is locked to X, try F2. F7 will get you back to X.
The problem is the setup in your XF86Config (or XF86Config-4 file which supercedes XF86Config - so choose correctly). Can you make a note of your "Mouse" section from here (I think it's under InputDevice) and tell us which mouse (PS/2 or USB) that you want to use. I suggest the PS/2 one to get started and then we can alter the config after that to accommodate both.
As for editors, PICO is fairly straight forward as is JOE (but remember CTRL-K, CTRL-X to save and exit with Joe).
There is also a manpage for XF86Config files.
Good luck,
James
PS. Mice DO work under Linux, it isn't just a Windows thing, and I think Logitech mice require a special setup.
RAMWolff
10-29-2003, 05:32 PM
Originally posted by Satanic Atheist
Dead mouse, eh? I suggest a taxidermist if you want to keep it forever. If not, you could always bury it.
Since I do some contract work for the Scottish Water here I recommend you do NOT flush dead mice down the toilet. Improper flushing of objects and dead animals down a toilet will damage the Wastewater filtrations screens and equipment. These are expensive, so your water rates will hike.
Anyway, to get to the command prompt, on boot, when it asks you which OS/kernel to load, you should be able to access the command prompt so you can append information to boot loader. If you try:
Linux 3
You should end up in console mode with the login prompt.
If you can't get to this, from the X login screen, do CTRL+ALT+F1 to switch to command line mode and log in there.
If Virtual Terminal 1 is locked to X, try F2. F7 will get you back to X.
The problem is the setup in your XF86Config (or XF86Config-4 file which supercedes XF86Config - so choose correctly). Can you make a note of your "Mouse" section from here (I think it's under InputDevice) and tell us which mouse (PS/2 or USB) that you want to use. I suggest the PS/2 one to get started and then we can alter the config after that to accommodate both.
As for editors, PICO is fairly straight forward as is JOE (but remember CTRL-K, CTRL-X to save and exit with Joe).
There is also a manpage for XF86Config files.
Good luck,
James
PS. Mice DO work under Linux, it isn't just a Windows thing, and I think Logitech mice require a special setup.
You are a breath of fresh air in this Web full of nasty anit Microsoft types that would have scewered me for even say that word and then turned around told me to go back to M$ and give up or some stupid thing like that. Thanks for not taking my rant personally and helping me out. I am at work right now but now I feel like I have hope.
Oh yea, I think your pretty funny too!! :D
Richard ;)
Satanic Atheist
10-29-2003, 08:21 PM
Anti-Microsoft? Since when <<looks angelic>>
As for the:
Oh yea, I think your pretty funny too!!
I probably should have the nick of "Flamethrower" for some of the antics I've gotten up to! Just go to /dev/random and see what I mean.
If you manage to post back some info like I said above then I'll be happy to help.
In fact, I'll even e-mail my XF86Config to myself at my work addy so I can post stuff from there.
Hahaha! Take that evil proxy-server-that-won't-let-me-access-my-systems-at-home!!!
James
APwrs
10-29-2003, 09:50 PM
If you're running Mandrake (and it sounds like you are) then there is something else you can try too, as Linux is just full of options. Once you log into the command line as root (as described above) then you can try running mouseconfig and just use the arrow keys and enter to navigate, choose the Logitech mouse, and see how that goes for you.
hard candy
10-29-2003, 09:53 PM
Hahaha! Take that evil proxy-server-that-won't-let-me-access-my-systems-at-home!!!
That is probably the smartest thing the sys admin ever did-:D
RAMWolff
10-30-2003, 03:02 AM
HI again,
OK, so I managed to get into the console and used Midnight Commander to access the XF86Config-4 file and here is what was there:
So I'm not at all sure what to do here. I do remember about the ZAxixMapping from a while back and I'm not sure if the 4 5 is supposed to have a dash or a coma or a period or nothing in between the two besides the space??
Why do I have two mice (Input Devices) mentioned here? Is one supposed to be the tablet that is recognized but not usable (either :rolleyes:)??
Not sure where to look for the right text to put in to these lines if they need to be changed. Any help with this area. Yea, I'm back in WinXP typing this one out!!
Thanks much!! :D
Richard ;)
dysharmonic
10-30-2003, 03:48 AM
Umm...are both rodents connected to your system? If not then just comment out the second mouse section, put a hash (#) in front of every line. Restart and see if anything happens.
Another approach is to try changing your login manager. I'm not really sure but if you could show us the content of your /etc/sysconfig/desktop. There should be a line which says DISPLAYMANAGER=GDM, try changing it to something like KDM or XDM.
RAMWolff
10-30-2003, 03:49 AM
Hi AGAIN,
OK, here are some similar suggestions posted in another forum that I am asking in:
If you press CTRL+ALT+F1 you can log into tty1. Check if the mouse responds there. ALT+F7 should take you back to X. With KDE the windows key gives you an application menu - you can use the arrow keys to navigate.
OK, I was able to access the command prompt. I have a Logitech Keyboard and you have to press the F Lock to have the "F" keys (as in F1, F7 etc....) available. So once in and then back again I tried the arrow keys and I'm not getting anything. So........................
Try using the 'su' command to login as root, then run mousedrake. Select your mouse model with the keyboard, press tab until the OK button is active then press space. I've had some success with my own mouse issues using this. Type exit to end the root session. If you need to swap tasks ALT+TAB should work.
I went back in to the command prompt, logged in and then typed mousedrake and up came the program to configure the mouse. I must have tried just about every driver and NOTHING is working. I would go in and out of "X" to see if anything worked and NADA is working!! :(
So if there is a way to set the driver by hand by hand editing the XF86Config-4 file then I will need the info for each line to enter in. I have NO idea, as stated in the post above this one, what to type in there!!
Sorry to be a pain in the "you know what" about this. Such a pain but a lesson too! :)
Thanks
Richard ;)
APwrs
10-30-2003, 07:10 AM
There is only supposed to be a space between the 4 and 5, so that's fine. However, the 4 and 5 are supposed to be completely enclosed in quotes. According to your post, your line looks like:
Option "ZAxisMapping" 4 5"
If that's really the way it's written in your file, then that could cause a problem. As you can see, there's no open quote before the 4 as there should be. Instead of what you posted, it should look like this:
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
Hope that helps.
RAMWolff
10-30-2003, 12:42 PM
Originally posted by Fahrenheit451
Umm...are both rodents connected to your system? If not then just comment out the second mouse section, put a hash (#) in front of every line. Restart and see if anything happens.
Another approach is to try changing your login manager. I'm not really sure but if you could show us the content of your /etc/sysconfig/desktop. There should be a line which says DISPLAYMANAGER=GDM, try changing it to something like KDM or XDM.
Comment out the second one then?? Makes sense, since I'm pretty sure the Wacom is not the one in there. I see this in both the XF86Config and XF86Config-4 files, so I should do this for both or just one of them??
Also, why am I changing the DISPLAYMANAGER=GDM to DISPLAYMANAGER=KDM?? I DO use KDE as my default Desktop manager, so I guess that makes sence?!?!?!
APwrs,
Oh and I was tired last night when typing this out so it was MY bad when I typed out Option "ZAxisMapping" 4 5" should have read Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5", thanks for noticing my mistake. That's what I get for trying to do this late at night after working a long day on top of it!! :D
**UPDATE**
Well, I gave in and just reloaded the OS. I know, I know, the wimps way out but I was just fed up. I looked at the DISPLAYMANAGER and it's set to KDE so that was fine. I tried to comment out the second "Mouse2" and all of a sudden I couldn't get into "X" and when I tried to go in VIA the Command Prompt the Config-4 file was EMPTY, so I'm not AT ALL sure what the heck happened. All I did was comment out the lines connected to the "Mouse2" profile and then hit F2 (save) and the F10 (quit) and then halted the computer so I could reboot it and then came back to only being logged in at a level 5 (which is the Command Prompt level) and that's when I discovered the mess. Then for some reason I couldn't get out of that page and had to do a CTRL + ALT + DEL and that's when I decided to pop in the Mandrake CD 1 to just do a do over. I didn't reformatt my /home directory so it's in tact and I gave in and hooked up my USB mouse. Was recognized the second it hit the plugin and the Setup loaded the driver (didn't do this for the PS/2 version of the same mouse! :mad: Damn Mandrake for their forward thinking! :D ) So I guess I use the USB mouse from now on in Mandrake, sigh....
I'm typing this from Mandrake BTW, so it's all good.
NOW I just need to know where I can download the Kernal Source package so I can see If I can get my Wacom tablet working under Mandrake 9.2. Anyone know where I can get this file from??
Release: 2.4.22-10mdkenterprise
Many thanks! :)
Richard ;)
APwrs
10-30-2003, 02:49 PM
I believe the sources should be on the third Mandrake CD. I'm just curious, what made you decide to use the enterprise kernel instead of the regular one?
RAMWolff
10-30-2003, 04:44 PM
Originally posted by APwrs
I believe the sources should be on the third Mandrake CD. I'm just curious, what made you decide to use the enterprise kernel instead of the regular one?
I didn't know I had a choice!! Maybe the setup chose that one for me as it detected what I had connected to the computer. The only thing 'out of the ordinary' for a normal Linux setup that I do have connected are the USB Wacom and removable Western Digital drive, other than that it's all pretty ordinary. Maybe you could give me an explaination of why this may have occurred and if the regular Kernal would have been better for me in the long run??
Many thanks! :)
Richard ;)
APwrs
10-31-2003, 12:32 AM
How many processors does your computer have? How much RAM do you have?
RAMWolff
10-31-2003, 03:57 AM
I have a Pentium IV 2.2 and 1.5 Gigs of DDR RAM.
BTW, I have a little issue about the RAM.
I have 1.5 (almost 1.6) Gig's of RAM and in Windows XP Pro Windows sucks up about 400 Mb's with about 46 processes running. In Mandrake 9.2/KDE desktop and I have about 500 MB's left of my 1.6 Gigs. Why is that?? I thought Mandrake was supposed to be better at handleing RAM because it used the swap to work out of??
Many thanks
Richard ;)
Satanic Atheist
10-31-2003, 07:57 AM
Post the results of top.
What is the use of having so much memory free? It's just being wasted. At the top of the top command, you will see a line that says "buffers" or "cached" or something and it'll be a huge number.
This is a representation of the amount of data on your hard disk that is being used regularly or has been used recently and therefore it's a LOT faster to maintain it in RAM. If something else needs to use it, it'll be written (synced to disk if it requires it) or simply removed and replaced with the new data.
This is part of the reason why memory management in Linux is generally regarded as superior to most other operating systems.
James
APwrs
10-31-2003, 08:52 PM
Having that much RAM is more than likely the reason why the enterprise kernel was chosen for you instead of the regular kernel.
RAMWolff
10-31-2003, 09:49 PM
Originally posted by Satanic Atheist
Post the results of top.
What is the use of having so much memory free? It's just being wasted. At the top of the top command, you will see a line that says "buffers" or "cached" or something and it'll be a huge number.
This is a representation of the amount of data on your hard disk that is being used regularly or has been used recently and therefore it's a LOT faster to maintain it in RAM. If something else needs to use it, it'll be written (synced to disk if it requires it) or simply removed and replaced with the new data.
This is part of the reason why memory management in Linux is generally regarded as superior to most other operating systems.
James
I guess I'm not understanding this at all James. As I said I have all this DDR RAM which I do make use of when I'm working in Photoshop or the GIMP or another RAM intensive application in Windows. But just doing a fresh boot into Mandrake and then checking the Memory area in the Control Center and it's much more than 1/2 used. God forbid I invoke the GIMP and start working it would probably freeze the system. I think something is wrong here. How can Mandrake and KDE need 1 whole gigabyte of my RAM?? That makes NO sense to me what so ever!!
The processes under Windows might eat up 400 Mb's but Mandrake is eating up 1 Gig with the processes, to simplify this mind numbing issue!!
If I had 512 Mb's would the system even boot in and run correctly? According to what I see here it would freeze upon booting into KDE!! No, this makes NO sense to me!!
Not sure what the 'top' command is. I'm actually in Windows right now taking care of my email stuff, so I can't try that one out.
Many thanks! :)
Richard ;)
Satanic Atheist
11-01-2003, 10:39 AM
The top command calls up a list of currently running processes. Here's mine at the moment:
Not sure if that will format correctly, but you can see that I have no swap partition, and currently only have 7Mb free. 490Mb is currently holding cached data.
James
RAMWolff
11-01-2003, 06:33 PM
What a pain, I can't copy and paste the info, every time I try to do that I guess a process is created so it kills the copy command. :mad:
Anyway, here is what I have from my "top" command:
So maybe you can read this. Seems to me my swap partition is not being used AT ALL and the RAM is what is being used. I thought in the Linux platform it was the opposite. The Swap was used primarily and the RAM was used as little as possible. I'm confused, obviously!! :D
Thanks! :)
Richard ;)
PS: Here is a snapshot of the Konsole: http://www.ramwolffsworld.com/Public_Pics/snapshot1.png
APwrs
11-01-2003, 06:58 PM
If swap was mostly used instead of RAM, that would be incredibly inefficient and much slower. I'm on Mandrake 9.2, and right now I have 59 processes running (including KDE, Internet, web browser etc.) and my system has a total of 580 megs of RAM, with 500 megs free.
RAMWolff
11-01-2003, 08:56 PM
Originally posted by APwrs
If swap was mostly used instead of RAM, that would be incredibly inefficient and much slower. I'm on Mandrake 9.2, and right now I have 59 processes running (including KDE, Internet, web browser etc.) and my system has a total of 580 megs of RAM, with 500 megs free.
That's why there HAS to be something wrong. Your system is running about as many processes as mine and yours is only using 80Mb's of RAM and my system is using more than 1/2 of my 1.5 gigs?? See the attatchment, a screen shot of my current running Memory area. I think, for me, in instances like this images come in handy!!
See what you all see and let me know if there is some adjustment I need to make to the system to get it a bit better. It would be OK if it were using maybe 1/2 the DDR RAM but it's using over a gig of the RAM just to run processes. It's not like I have the GIMP and I'm burning CD's at the same time while I'm typing this out too.
Many thanks for the help!! :)
Richard ;)
APwrs
11-01-2003, 09:10 PM
It would be helpfull if you ran the command "free" in a console window, took a screenshot of that, and then posted it here.
Satanic Atheist
11-01-2003, 09:36 PM
Hmmm, you're right. It does look like something is eating away your RAM.
Incidentally, if you use:
> top -d 20
You can alter the refresh rate to 20 seconds giving you ample time to copy the screen.
You can also do the following:
> top -n 1 > /tmp/topoutpt.txt
The "-n 1" switch tells it to only refresh once before quitting, and obviously the output is chucked into a file. Here is my current status dump.
James
RAMWolff
11-01-2003, 10:37 PM
Originally posted by APwrs
It would be helpfull if you ran the command "free" in a console window, took a screenshot of that, and then posted it here.
Well, it's good to know that I'm NOT going crazy after all!! OK, so here is the screen shot you asked for:
Also, I read down the boot log and typed out a line I found on the RAM:
09:42:01 AM localhost kernal Memory: 890444k/1572800k available (1677k kernel code, 22448k reserved, -2322k data, 176k init, 655296k highmem, Ok BadRAM)
BadRAM?? What's that about??
Also, this whole, entire thread started because I was on a quest to get my Wacom tablet working, believe it or not. How things are inter-related!! :D The tablet does not work but here are quite a few lines I found in the log that says the system does recognize it and does seem to have a driver for it and it's loaded but the tablet does not work!! :( Here are the lines I found:
09:42:01 AM localhost kernal usb.c: registered new driver wacom
09:42:01 AM localhost kernal input0: Wacom Intuos2 6X8 on usb6:20
09:42:01 AM localhost kernal wacom.c: v1.21.3 Vojtech Pavlik <vojtech@suse.cz>
09:42:01 AM localhost kernal wacom.c: USB Wacom Graphire adn Wacom Intuos tablet driver
09:42:01 AM localhost kernal /etc/hotplug/usb.agent Setup wacom usbmouse hid for USB product 56a/42/115
09:42:01 AM localhost kernal service_harddrake[928] found usb mouse wacom ()
Very interesting. I know, one thing at a time but this just all boggles my mind. Too much RAM being used by some hoggy process and a tablet that is loaded but does not work and a PS/2 mouse that doesn't work but I also read in the log that the system is continuing to load a driver for it but it didn't work, obviously, why I switched to the more compatible USB version!! W E I R D ! !
Many thanks
Richard ;)
PS: BOY am I learning allot about Mandrake and different commands and what not. You guys are just great!! :)
APwrs
11-02-2003, 12:33 AM
I can explain why if you'd like, but basically, when you took that screenshot, you had about 672 megs of RAM free. What's the biggest memory using program you're running that you know about? Do you have any servers running? Is there anyone else logging into your machine over a network?
RAMWolff
11-02-2003, 01:16 AM
Originally posted by APwrs
I can explain why if you'd like, but basically, when you took that screenshot, you had about 672 megs of RAM free. What's the biggest memory using program you're running that you know about? Do you have any servers running? Is there anyone else logging into your machine over a network?
Yes, I would very much like to know what's going on. I will list the services that I have running in case you see one that may not be worth running at start up (I do need my Windows partitions available FYI). These are all started on boot:
and I'm not sure if anyone is riding on my system. Is the firewall worth setting up and how hard is it. I use Kerio Firewall over in Windows and it was SO easy and it's got me 100% protected, I go our occasionally to have my system checked at Shields UP! (https://grc.com/x/ne.dll?bh0bkyd2) So let me know if it's worth it on this platform to be careful as I am over in Windows.
Many thanks! :)
Richard ;)
APwrs
11-02-2003, 05:06 AM
In Mandrake 9.2, you can set up a firewall through the Mandrake Control Center in the Security section if you feel the need. I personally don't. To explain what I was talking about earlier, when you run the "free" command, the amount of actual free RAM you have is listed on the second line. The reason for this is because in Linux, a lot of common and recently used things are placed in memory so they can be quickly and easily retrieved. However that RAM is still essentially free because if another program needs more RAM, then Linux will clear out some of the information that's cached in memory so the new program can use it.
As for the services you have run when Linux boots up, exactly which ones you need depends upon what you want to do with your computer, but the only services I have set up to run when Linux boots are:
dm
keytable
network
numlock
random
sound
xfs
RAMWolff
11-02-2003, 09:56 PM
Originally posted by APwrs
In Mandrake 9.2, you can set up a firewall through the Mandrake Control Center in the Security section if you feel the need. I personally don't. To explain what I was talking about earlier, when you run the "free" command, the amount of actual free RAM you have is listed on the second line. The reason for this is because in Linux, a lot of common and recently used things are placed in memory so they can be quickly and easily retrieved. However that RAM is still essentially free because if another program needs more RAM, then Linux will clear out some of the information that's cached in memory so the new program can use it.
As for the services you have run when Linux boots up, exactly which ones you need depends upon what you want to do with your computer, but the only services I have set up to run when Linux boots are:
dm
keytable
network
numlock
random
sound
xfs
Is there a way to turn off this cacheing of memory for use by other programs so I can see if there is a noticable difference??
I went out today and replaced my new 1 gig generic stick with a 1 gig Mushkin stick. No difference what so ever!! :( Then I thought that maybe the other stick that is 512Mb might have had a bad bank on it so I had my other 512 stick from my previous 1 gig DDR RAM setup and switched it out the one in the DIMM socket for that one and still no difference either! :(
So there was a suggestion that I get the newest updated kernel for my current ditribution and install that but then it's this messy process that I am totally unsure about. 1) I have no idea where to get the kernel from but then someone suggested that I use Mandrake Update which DOES NOT offer an update for the kernel. I'm am currently downloading some needed files but with all 3 boxes checked there is no kernel update in the list. Any suggestions??
Many thanks!
Richard ;)
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