Logitech PS/2 serial mouse -> no entry in devfs

linux slacker · n00b Joined: 03 May 2002 Posts: 29 Location: Buffalo, NY

I've been having a devil of a time trying to get my system (and hence, X) to recognize my mouse. It's a very standard, 3-button Logitech PS/2 serial mouse, which has never been a problem in other flavours of Linux (Slackware, RedHat, Mandrake, etc.). According to BIOS and M$ Windoze it's running on IRQ 12.

There is an entry /dev/mouse which is a link to /dev/misc/psaux, but /dev/misc/psaux doesn't exist. That is, there is no entry under devfs for psaux. Oh, and /dev/psaux doesn't exist either.

Running XFree86 -configure indicates that no pointing device can be found. I've tried fiddling with gpm with no success, but I think the underlying cause is with devfs not jiving with it somehow. So I tried compiling a kernel without devfs (I know, Gentoo needs to have it), and then running sh ./MAKEDEV but that didn't help either.

Is there something I should be compiling into the kernel that I'm missing? The kernel options for mice didn't seem to fit my situation (it's not a busmouse, or USB).

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Cheers

leifbrown · n00b Joined: 25 Apr 2002 Posts: 36

making menuconfig,

Character Devices --> Mice --> Mouse Support (Not Serial and Bus Mice) --> PS/2 Mouse (aka "auxiliary device") support (NEW)

You're saying you DON'T have that enabled?

(Possibly it doesn't show up? What kernel-sources are you using? Did you copy your /usr/src/linux.config over from a system where that option might not have existed? ...)

I can pretty much guarantee that the ps/2 mouse won't be recognized EVER unless you've got that compiled, or are willing to go get the source from somewhere else.

You can reliably compile the mouse as a module, since it's not neccessary for booting/terminal work. Add it to /etc/modules.autoload if you're booting directly into X.

linux slacker · n00b Joined: 03 May 2002 Posts: 29 Location: Buffalo, NY

Boy, do I feel dumb...

I must have skipped by that option 4 or 5 times. Thanks, my mouse is working perfectly now.

Cheers.

Preacher Dave · Guest

Ok, I've got the ps/2 mouse in the kernel (believe me I've checked several times) and it still doesn't work.
/dev/psaux works every other time. The times it doesn't work I get "psaux: No such device or address." And it's not just x that's the problem. I've even tried sending it through more just as a test with similar results. Major and minor numbers are right. Anything I can do to avoid a reinstall (which is nasty since X and KDE take more time than even God has to compile)

cbm · n00b Joined: 12 May 2002 Posts: 7

Dunno if this is a simillar problem or not but i have a Logitech MouseMan+ PS/2 mouse (works with IMPS/2 protocol on other GNU/Linux boxen) that causes my kernel (2.4.19 gentoo r1) to reboot my system part way through startup (not sure exactly since its scrolling by pretty quick but i think before the runlevel scripts kick in.

Can't help but think this has something to do with devfs but for now i'm just using a USB Logitech FirstMouse+ and that works fine.

If i boot my system without the ps/2 mouse and setup X to use the ps/2 as corepointer and the psaux mouse as sendcoreevents *and then* plugin the psaux mouse it doesn't work either (error in /var/log/XFree86.0.log says "cannot open device /dev/misc/psaux...")

my kernel has psaux support enabled btw and i'm using an MSI K7T266 Pro2 motherboard. I started with gentoo 1.1a and build from stratch.

I guess at sometime i will try 2.4.19-gentoo-r4 and see if that fixes things up a bit...

Cheers,
Colin