PS/2 mouse erratic in X and more
Hi,
I have never installed linux before, unless you count SuSE Live Eval 7.3
(the cd-rom thing), but I spent most of Monday dragging Debian 2.2 r5
potato kicking and screaming onto my desktop. I've made it a long way,
but I may finally be stuck and cannot find suitable answers in the
archive. First a summary of my system and my current problems and then
a recap of what I learned in the install process for the benefit of
posterity. Sorry for the length, but I hope it will help someone figure
out my problems and help others searching for similar solutions.
My desktop is mostly a Sony PCV-220 Pentium II 266Mhz with the Intel
AL440LX motherboard running the latest BIOS (14) from Intel. It's got
the original ATI 3D Rage Pro Graphics card with 4MB ram and the original
PCI ESS Maestro-1 sound card. The original 8GB Maxtor Hard Drive is
Primary Master and a new 60GB Maxtor HD is Primary slave. The faceless
floppy was replaced when everything got put in a new case and the
Secondary Master is a CD-RW drive from I/OMagic or something. I've put
384MB of Simple Tech RAM (the max) on it. I still use the original Sony
Keyboard and the original Sony PS/2 mouse. The monitor is Sony
CPD-220VS.
I've been installing Debian on the new 60GB hard drive exclusively,
keeping my Win95 on the old HD. I have to boot with the floppy disk as
holding down shift as suggested doesn't seem to bring up any boot
options. I have 4 partitions a small boot one a 256MB root one a 384MB
swap one and a nearly 60 GB usr partition. I seem to do the total
re-install over again about every 2 hours, so if someone thinks those
partitions are bad for some reason, I welcome suggestions.
MY PROBLEM: I got the PS/2 mouse to work in the XFree86 setup by
choosing dev/psaux instead of dev/mouse, and it worked perfectly during
THAT setup routine. BUT, when I now boot into X (man was that an
accomplishment!) the mouse won't move at all at first and then when I
try to move it, it is very erratic, jumping all over the screen and
clicking buttons when I don't click. I've tried using the xmseconfig (I
have to hit F12 to get a drop down menu and then use the arrow keys and
tab to navigate X right now) but setting it up just like I did in shell
mode doesn't work. I found in the archive a suggestion that gpm was at
fault and it suggested doing: dpkg -p gpm and purging gpm out
completely. I did this but no effect. Also, I've tried running
xf86config now that I've purged gpm, but no help. In fact it made
things worse:
MY 2nd PROBLEM: When running xf86config I did something that screwed up
the resolution as all the text in X looks really grainy now. I thought
I picked the same options as when I was in the other XFree86 config
program (that the CDs run, what is that called by the way, and can I run
it without doing the whole bloody install a sixth time?) My monitor can
do 30-70kHz Horizontal and 50-120Hz vertical. 1024x768 @85Hz is my
preferred resolution, but it can handle 1280x1024 @60Hz. I give it
these custom ranges and I set up all the color depth options with the
first 3 at just 640x480 and 32bpp or whatever it is with 1024x768
800x600 and 640x480 in that order. (432) What do I run/do to get the
graphics looking right again?
What I learned that may help others:
There's something about that ATI 3D Rage Pro card that XFree86 does not
like at all. (I finally found something to this effect in the archives.)
For a long time all I could get when trying to write the XF86config file
was _X11TransSocketUnixXonnect: Can't connect: errno = 111 (9x) and then
Unable to communicate with X server! and this would start over and
over. I did CTRL-BREAK to get out of that and let everything else
install and then just kept trying to redo the XFree86 and it was funny,
I would get a little closer every time. My main advice is just keep
re-installing XFree86 and somehow it eventually works. You absolutely
must write down that crazy Vertical and Horizontal scan range for your
monitor though. You cannot BS on that step.
Also that a PS/2 mouse has to be dev/psaux instead of dev/mouse took me
forever to figure out. (And as described above it still doesn't work in
X).
I guess my last piece of advice is that on this most recent install I
picked the bare minimum in the simple package setup. (I also feel that
whatever you do, as a newbie, you should never pick advanced. You will
basically guarantee that you're going to have to do the whole thing
over. That's what happened to me.) All I selected in the simple mode
was the gnome stuff and the x stuff. Install the other packages once
you get a basic graphical interface working. I'm still not there
myself, and I'd appreciate any help with my mouse and screen resolution
issues. Thanks.
P.S. My inexperience means that telling me to install foo won't help at
all. You have to say where foo is, how I'd find it from a bash shell and
exactly what I type to install it. I appreciate the verbosity.
--
Brian W. Carver
brianwcarver at yahoo dot com
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