Steve Grace wrote:
I gave up and reinstalled the base OS again with no
additional packages.
I then installed and configured kde-core, kdm, and x-windows-system-core (I
want to start with a minimal environment and add to it). KDE didn't start
automatically so (assuming that I missed something) I installed the entire
kde package, which didn't solve the problem. I saw a note somewhere about
starting X11 with "xstart"; I tried that and got an error (listed in
/var/log/XFree86.0.log):
Cannot open device /dev/input/mice
It seems that X11 doesn't like my mouse (it's a PS/2 trackball). The mouse
worked in Gnome yesterday (although it was auto-detected; not specifically
selected) and works with Knoppix (using the same device: /dev/input/mice).
Try "cat /dev/input/mice" and move the mouse around. Any garbage being thrown up on the screen? If not, either this device is wrong for your trackball, or you're missing a kernel module which provides driver support for your trackball.
I would've thought a PS/2 device would show up on /dev/psaux instead of /dev/input/mice. I suspect your original install had both the /dev/input/mice and /dev/psaux entries in /etc/X11/xorg.conf (or XF86Config-4), and you only noticed the non-used "mice" entry, whereas your recent install does not have both, only the "mice" entry.
I prefer to install gpm, the console mouse driver, so that I can have the mouse outside of X also; it also makes troubleshooting these kinds of problems easier.
-- Kent