PS/2 mouse timeouts in X.org 7.1 [SOLVED]

selig · Last edited by selig on Sat Oct 21, 2006 9:39 am; edited 1 time in total

I upgraded my xorg-x11 from 7.0-r1 to 7.1 yesterday, and my PS/2 mouse is working unreliably. Every once in a while it stops and starts working again only after a second or so. Alternatively, it "loses synchronization" and goes crazy until I click a button on it.

I am getting errors from the kernel psmouse driver too:

halfgaar · l33t Joined: 22 Feb 2004 Posts: 781 Location: Netherlands

It may not be a direct answer to your question, but is your mouse USB, or does it have USB functionality (in case you connected it with a USB-to-PS2 converter)? In that case, you could try the "evdev" protocol (It may also work for PS2, I don't know). It requires some configuration (kernel configuration for one) and investigating. With evdev, I can use all of the 8 buttons on my Logitech MX500 mouse.

If evdev is not an option for you, or if it doesn't solve the problem, I have no idea what it could be. Can you give some more info about what kind of mouse it is, and show the mouse section in xorg.conf?
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selig · Posted: Fri Oct 20, 2006 6:25 pm Post subject:

Thank you for your advice, it is a standard PS/2-only mouse, a pretty old one. Genius NetMouse PRO. Nothing fancy in my config:

selig · Posted: Fri Oct 20, 2006 7:14 pm Post subject:

I have successfully set up the mouse as an evdev device, but with the same results. It worked for a while and then it started malfunctioning and this appeared in dmesg:

halfgaar · l33t Joined: 22 Feb 2004 Posts: 781 Location: Netherlands

The tablet works OK, and the mouse doesn't? That kind of implies that there's something wrong with the mouse. But if there were, why didn't the problem occur with X.org 7.0, or in Windows?

I think this is a bug in X.org. It's kind of a difficult one to track down, but I think it's worthy of a bug report at www.x.org or xorg.freedesktop.org.
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selig · Posted: Sat Oct 21, 2006 7:56 am Post subject:

I have just found out that it indeed is a hardware problem, so I have to buy a new mouse. I do not know why it appeared just now, but it must have been a coincidence. But thank you for your help and pointing out the evdev mouse option, I think I am going to need it since I would like to buy the Logitech MX revolution mouse. I hope it will serve me for so long as my old NetMouse PRO.

halfgaar · l33t Joined: 22 Feb 2004 Posts: 781 Location: Netherlands

Another small tip: use the logitech-applet. If you don't, the optical sensor uses it's default CPI (counts per inch). My MX500 has 400 default (as does any mouse), and with the applet I can set it to 800. This makes the mouse cursor move much faster, and therefore, you can reduce the amount of software acceleration. If at first this doesn't sound appealing, consider that the CPI of mice haven't changed since the 640x480 era (I believe). When using 1280x960 or something similair, a faster responding mouse is convinient.

And, with the tool I can disable the "cruise control" buttons (cruise control means they act as scroll-up and scroll-down), and get them to work as autonomous buttons.
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Doogman · Apprentice Joined: 24 Sep 2004 Posts: 244

Actually you want to use "lomoco" as the logitech_applet is a dead project. I went through setting-up my MX518 here:

https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-502422-highlight-.html

You better search a bit on the revolution. I'm not sure if that funky mouse wheel is fully supported in Linux.

selig · Posted: Sat Oct 21, 2006 5:30 pm Post subject:

Thank you for the info. I have decided on buying a G7 rather than Revolution, since the former has 2000DPI sensor and the latter only 800, for similar price.