On Tue, Mar 10, 2009 at 11:41 AM, Sarfaraz Kazi sarzkazi@gmail.com wrote:
Hi!
I recently installed FC10 on my desktop PC. Everything's running fine expect for my logitech 3-button serial mouse which is not getting recognised under FC10.
In earlier versions, it used to work by manually editing the xorg.conf file as below:
Section "InputDevice" Identifier "Configured Mouse" Driver "mouse" Option "CorePointer" Option "Device" "/dev/ttyS0" Option "Protocol" "auto" Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5" EndSection
However, in FC10 there is no xorg.conf file by default. So, as per instructions that I found on the net, I created xorg.conf file by giving the below command:
Xorg -configure :1
and manually edited the mouse section accordingly. But still no luck.
Then I tried using the system-config-display utility but there is no mouse section in it. Uncle Google also has thrown his hands up! Please help!
Dear Sarfaraz,
The Default in fedora 10 is to use a completely autodetected mechanism of handling hardware. This works for most hardware because they are designed to be probed and identify themselves correctly. Sadly, serial mice are not among these devices, and linux isnt the only os to have issues with detection of serial mice and other serial devices(http://support.microsoft.com/kb/283063).
That being said, there is a workaround to specify to the Kernel Input Subsystem(that is autoprobed) that there is a mouse available. The command used for it is '/usr/sbin/inputattach' , which is part of the 'gpm' package, installed by default. Note that this command has to be run before X starts up and does it's autoprobing, therefore it should be included as part of the system startup( The ideal/recommended location for this is in /etc/rc.d/rc.local ).
For example, if you have a 3 button Logitech serial mouse with a scroll wheel connected on COM1, this is the line i would add in rc.local "/usr/sbin/inputattach --mmwheel /dev/ttyS0"
I understand that this is a bit irregular, but it's the only way of ensuring that other serial hardware does not get mistaken for a mouse. Remember, the serial port and most serial protocols are over 20+ years old, long before people even considered that a computer would be intelligent enough to ask a device to identify itself :D (Reminds me of my society's watchman).
Regards R. K. Rajeev
Regards, Sarfaraz -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers