RE: Text copy/paste feature not working for me

[Kris Huber <khuber@sorensontech.com>]

Hi Kent,

It turned out I wasn't running gpm, and using 
Section "Pointer"
    Protocol "microsoft"
    Device "/dev/ttyS0"
EndSection
in XF86Config fixed the problem, as my Logitech serial mouse is MS mouse
compatible.  During installation I'd selected the only driver for a Logitech
mouse and it wasn't fully compatible with my model, apparently.  Copy/paste
works now!

Thanks,
Kris

-----Original Message-----
From: westk [mailto:westk@acu.edu]
Sent: Friday, October 19, 2001 7:26 PM
To: debian-user; Kris Huber
Subject: RE: Text copy/paste feature not working for me


>===== Original Message From Kris Huber <khuber@sorensontech.com> =====
>I did an install of the potato kernel and selected packages.  I chose
>enlightenment and gnome under X11, which I've used before under kernel 2.4.
>A feature I use quite a bit,  hi-lighting text with left mouse button, then
>middle-clicking to produce a copy of that text, is not working.  I'm not
>sure just where to look for that feature.  My suspicion is that my middle
>mouse button is not working.  I have a serial mouse from Logitech and I
>selected a Logitech mouse driver during the install.  For 3-button
emulation
>I selected 'no' because it has 3 buttons and shouldn't need emulation.
>Under 2.4 a more generic mouse driver was used, I think.  I'm quite new to
>installation issues.  How do I try a different mouse driver?
>
>Thanks for any clue,
>Kris
>
>

DISCLAIMER: I may be completely wrong.

There are generally two "types" of mouse driver; one, gpm, is for the text 
(non-X) console; the other is the X mouse driver. These two interact, so the

answer to your question will depend on if you're running gpm or not.

To find out, run the command "ps ax|grep gpm". If you're running gpm, you'll

see something like:

infotech-02[westk]:/home/westk> ps ax|grep gpm
  181 ?        S      0:01 /usr/sbin/gpm -m /dev/psaux -t ps2 -Rraw
  344 pts/1    S      0:00 grep gpm

The 181 line above tells where gpm expects to find the mouse (/dev/psaux), 
what type of driver it's using (-t ps2 = ps/2 type), and what type, if any, 
repeating it's doing (raw).

If you're not running gpm, you should only see the "grep gpm" line of the 
above output.

Another and more direct method of seeing if you're running gpm is to simply 
Ctrl-Alt-F1 to a non-X virtual console (you can get back to X in most cases 
with Alt-F7), and simply move the mouse. If you're running gpm, you should
see 
a block-shaped mouse cursor moving around. If it moves erratically, that
means 
that gpm has the wrong settings.

gpm (by default on Debian systems) keeps its config info in /etc/gpm.conf.
You 
can edit this file manually by hand, and then restart the gpm daemon (run 
"/etc/init.d/gpm restart"), or you can run the gpm configuration utility
which 
is probably a tad easier for newbies ("gpmconfig").

X keeps its mouse settings in /etc/X11/XF86Config or /etc/X11/XF86Config-4. 
The settings are similar, but not quite the same, as those for gpm.

Let us know the contents of /etc/gpm.conf and the mouse settings of 
/etc/X11/XF86Config[-4], and then we'll know better how to answer your 
question.

Kent