On Tuesday 10 March 2009 11:41, Sarfaraz Kazi 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.

Is your serial port / mouse ok. Move your mouse after doing cat /dev/ttyS0

you should get some junk. Which means mouse and serial port is working.

To check the serial port short pin 2 and 3 with a coin cat /dev/ttyS0 on one terminal echo some_ text_file > /dev/ttyS0 on another terminal You should get content of some_ text_file on the cat terminal.

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

On Wed, Mar 11, 2009 at 2:52 AM, Sarfaraz Kazi sarzkazi@gmail.com wrote:

2009/3/11 Rajeev R. K. rajeevrk@gmail.com:

...

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.

Dear Sarfaraz,

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"

Regards R. K. Rajeev

Dear Rajeev,

Thanks for your helpful reply. Just one query, my (ancient!) mouse does not has a scroll wheel. So should I drop the "--mmwheel" part in the command mentioned by you?

Dear Sarfaraz,

Just run "inputattatch --help" and u'll see a list of supported input devices.. just choose from the list, and put in the corresponding option

Regards R. K. Rajeev

Thanks & Regards, Sarfaraz -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers

2009/3/11 Rajeev R. K. rajeevrk@gmail.com:

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.

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"

Dear Rajeev,

As per your instructions, I appended the following line to /etc/rc.d/rc.local -

/usr/sbin/inputattach --microsoft /dev/ttyS0

However, after rebooting, the system halted at the boot screen itself just after the progress fills up completely. On pressing F1, the last message I can see is "Starting anacron [OK]". I can move the mouse cursor (white rectangle) at this point, but the system won't boot into X.

I had to comment out the aforementioned line from rc.local by booting into rescue mode off my fc10 dvd.

I tried giving the same command as root from X terminal and the mouse works perfectly. Am I doing something wrong here?

Regards, Sarfaraz

2009/3/11 Rajeev R. K. rajeevrk@gmail.com:

Try making it "/usr/sbin/inputattach --microsoft /dev/ttyS0 &"

Regards R. K. Rajeev

Thank you very much! I made the above mentioned change and the mouse is now working perfectly. Thanks Rajeev & jtd, for your invaluable help.

Regards, Sarfaraz