[techtalk] newbie mouse weirdness

[Nicole Zimmerman]

Make sure you have gpm installed. :o) Same thing happened to me before I
installed it.

If you already do, that could be another problem (obviously!) ;o)

Also if you don't have the correct device in X (like the correct mouse
type), X won't be happy.  On my work machine this was reflected by the
mouse only going about 50 pixels from the edges... and the mouse would
click itself for me (how considerate, eh?). Once I told it to point to
/dev/mouse (regardless of what kind of mouse it thought it was), it fixed
the problem (twice, I had to tell vmware to do the same after seeing the
same erratic behaviour).

-nicole

> My system is a clunky old Pentium 133, with a serial mouse (on ttyS0 I
> think), and serial modem (on ttyS1).  I have recently installed Corel
> Linux (Debian with a slightly modified KDE desktop) and it's mostly
> working...
> I have no Win or MS os on the machine at all, and although it has a PCI
> network card, it's standalone right now.
> 
> The weirdness is:  Every so often I boot up and have a mouse cursor, but
> no mouse operation.  Right from when the x-server starts up (before KDE
> displays its login dialog) the X cursor is no go.
> 
> I checked /dev and it seems there is no "mouse" file/device in there
> when this happens.  The plot thickens - no-one leave the room!