Restarting mouse, Clock problems + general questions

[supster]

I'm using a KVM to switch between my XP box and my Gentoo box. I have a problem where I will sometimes forget to switch over to the Gentoo box while X is loading. This makes my mouse act incorrectly when I do switch over to login. Is there anyway to have X reload the mouse drivers? I can login and access a terminal screen without a mouse.

I'm also having a problem with the clock, I will set it to the correct clock time, but after the next reboot it will be hours off.

And an unrelated question: If I switch to a full screen terminal session with ctrl+alt+FX, how can I switch back to the X Server session?

[rjp]

Can't help with the mouse, but if it can be done I'd like to know too! My mouse freezes very occasionally in X. It's annoying, anyway, I digress.

By default, X runs in VT-7 so after doing say Ctrl-Alt-F1 just use Alt-F7 (no Ctrl from text mode).

The clock problem is probably caused by locale settings. I had the same problem a while ago and can't really remember how I solved it. However, a quick look in /etc shows I have a symbolic link from /etc/localtime to /usr/share/zoneinfo/GB as I'm in the UK. You should check this is set to the correct locale for you.

To set the time I use hwclock from a terminal, you need to ensure you know the difference between the hardware clock and the system clock.

Basically use:

hwclock --localtime --set --date="04/01/2004 12:00"

to set the hardware clock, then use:

hwclock --hctosys

to update the system time, if you use Gnome this should make the changes appear on the clock applet, I assume it's the same in other wm's.

There may well be a easier way, but this works for me. Check the man page for hwclock for a better explanation.

Hope this helps...

[supster]

Thanks but that didn't work

After resetting the clock, it works fine until the next reboot. After rebooting I can see that the clock is actually moving faster.