[SOLVED] No Mouse Under 2.6.27

[Cabhan]

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Howdy all. Due to circumstances outside of my control, I recently had to wipe out my box and re-install Gentoo. I got through the install happily, but I found that I have no mouse. What I mean is that /dev/input/mice gives no output when cat'd, and dmesg makes no mention of a mouse.

I have a Logitech TrackMan, and I have tried plugging it in via both USB and PS/2. Neither works. When I plug it in via USB, dmesg does report that a USB device was plugged in, and lsusb does report the correct model ("Logitech, Inc. TrackMan Wheel"), but /dev/input/mice still does nothing.

I have udev and hotplug both installed. I have, in my kernel, enabled CONFIG_HID_SUPPORT, CONFIG_HID, and CONFIG_USB_HID. I also have EHCI, OHCI, and UHCI enabled, as well as CONFIG_INPUT, CONFIG_INPUT_MOUSEDEV, and CONFIG_INPUT_MOUSE. All are compiled into the kernel (I'm not a big believer in modules).

As an interesting note, my PS/2 keyboard does work.

I have tried plugging in a USB key, and that is detected correctly.

Any thoughts on what I can try at this point?

[devils casper]

Hi Cabhan !

Have you checked Legacy USB Support in BIOS? Try to toggle it. It worked for me in the past.

[Cabhan]

Heh, my box practically IS legacy (it's from 2003). I checked out the BIOS, and there is a setting to enable USB in general, but it is enabled.

Some more useful information:

This mouse worked on my desktop before the reformat. I am assuming, therefore, that it is a kernel configuration or version problem. The mouse does work: when I booted the Gentoo LiveCD to do the install, it was all happy.

I have also gone ahead and checked out lsusb: the mouse is being detected on the bus, and verbose output recognizes it as an HID device. Interestingly, the device status is 0x0000, with a tag saying "bus powered", but I don't know if that maybe means that the mouse is not being powered? There are no lights or anything on it to indicate that.

Thanks.

[Cabhan]

In accepting the Idiot's Award for Linux usage, I would like to thank mounting of drives.

My /boot partition wasn't mounted, so my recompiled kernels weren't getting put onto sdb2, which is where GRUB looks for them.

Nothing to see here, move along.

[Jonathan183]

Hi Cabhan - time for me to ask a stupid question ... why do you use a separate boot partition ... is it a BIOS/grub limit on your system or do you have other reasons ? With live CDs there does not seem to be much advantage using a separate boot partition to me ... but it causes complication

[Cabhan]

Frankly, I mostly did it for kicks and giggles. As I understand it, the main rationale is security: /boot only needs to be mounted when modifying its contents. Therefore, by leaving it unmounted, viruses/malicious attacks won't be able to actually affect your GRUB config or kernel image.

[Jonathan183]

Root can remount read/write and a normal user does not have permissions to write ... so I thought the security advantage would be minimal ...
Gentoo handbook still has separate boot partition in the instructions I think ... still struggling with the advantage of that approach ...
Thanks for sharing your reasons