Bug#526095: xorg: KVM switch change makes mouse stop working

[David <wizzardx@gmail.com>]

Package: xorg
Version: 1:7.4+1
Severity: normal

Hi there.  I'm not sure if this is an xorg issue precisely, but it
seems to be the best place to post this.

I use a PS2 mouse, connected to a KVM switch (or more precisely, a USB
mouse, with a USB->PS2 adaptor, connected to a KVM switch that only
has PS2 connections).

When I switch away from X and back again, the mouse frequently becomes
completely unresponsive. If I stop and start X (/etc/init.d/dkm
restart), the mouse still doesn't work. If I try witching between
various Linux boxes on the KVM switch, the mouse still does not work.

However, as soon as I change over to a Windows XP machine (on the user
login screen), the mouse starts working (in Windows XP) in a few
seconds. Then when I switch back to KDE, the mouse has resumed
working.

Since I need to use the KVM switch fairly often, I mainly use the XP
box as a way to get my mouse working again in Linux.

What the above suggests, is that the XP login screen has some kind of
special logic which somehow resets either the KVM's PS2 internals, or
the mouse itself (I don't really understand how this is possible).

Is there something I can do with the X server to do a similar "Force
PS2 mouse reset", like Windows XP does automatically?

Thanks,

David.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: squeeze/sid
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: i386 (i686)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.29-1-686 (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_ZA.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_ZA.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash

Versions of packages xorg depends on:
ii  konsole [x-terminal-emulator] 4:4.2.2-1  X terminal emulator for KDE 4
ii  libgl1-mesa-glx [libgl1]      7.4-2      A free implementation of the OpenG
ii  libglu1-mesa                  7.4-2      The OpenGL utility library (GLU)
ii  x11-apps                      7.3+4      X applications
ii  x11-session-utils             7.3+1      X session utilities
ii  x11-utils                     7.4+1      X11 utilities
ii  x11-xfs-utils                 7.4+1      X font server utilities
ii  x11-xkb-utils                 7.4+2      X11 XKB utilities
ii  x11-xserver-utils             7.4+2      X server utilities
ii  xauth                         1:1.0.3-2  X authentication utility
ii  xfce4-terminal [x-terminal-em 0.2.12-1   Xfce terminal emulator
ii  xfonts-100dpi                 1:1.0.0-4  100 dpi fonts for X
ii  xfonts-75dpi                  1:1.0.0-4  75 dpi fonts for X
ii  xfonts-base                   1:1.0.0-6  standard fonts for X
ii  xfonts-scalable               1:1.0.0-6  scalable fonts for X
ii  xfonts-utils                  1:7.4+1    X Window System font utility progr
ii  xinit                         1.1.1-1    X server initialisation tool
ii  xkb-data                      1.5-2      X Keyboard Extension (XKB) configu
ii  xserver-xorg                  1:7.4+1    the X.Org X server
ii  xterm [x-terminal-emulator]   242-1      X terminal emulator

Versions of packages xorg recommends:
ii  xorg-docs                     1:1.4-4    Miscellaneous documentation for th

xorg suggests no packages.

-- no debconf information