How do you get USB mouse to work?

[Orion-X]

RIght now my USB mouse works in console environment, but when I start xwindows, it doesn't work anymore, I tried looking at XFree86 config file, but I don't know what and how to change it, can someone give a few pointers?

thx

[Tyr-7BE]

Scroll down to the part in your XFree86 file (careful...if you're running 4.0.x, it'll be X86Config-4 instead of X86Config) that says "pointer" or "mouse" and tell us what's there. If it doesn't work at all, it's most likely a problem with the device it's hooked up to. What distro are you using? If it works in console, you probably have gpm installed. Can you find your gpm configuration file as well?

[Orion-X]

Hmm, before we go further, I need help getting my root account back...

For some strange reason my system hung while I was fiddling around with the mouse config while using root. After I rebooted, the file system check failed, so I ran fsck on /, things were restored, and I thought my system is okay. But now when I run as root, I can't start xwindows. It keeps saying something about unable to lock .ICEauthority

I don't know what to do... how can I fix this? please help... thx

[Tyr-7BE]

Is it possible to post the exact error that you get? I would say that it's a permissions problem, but you're running it as root so it can't be. Perhaps a file somewhere just needs to be deleted. I recall seeing an error message like that when I was trying to get X up and running under Debian, but I did a lot of stuff to X under Debian so I can't for the life of me remember what I did.

[Orion-X]

okay, here is the error I got

** WARNING ** Unable to lock ICE authority file : /root/.ICEauthority


I saved a copy of that file and I went ahead to delete it... but it still gives me that error. What do I do? I just get blank screen when I tried to run x as root. Is there a way to "reconstruct" my root account? I really don't have anything that important in there. I just want it to be "normal".

thx

[Tyr-7BE]

hrmmm...long shot, but try "chmod 777 /root/.ICEauthority" and see where that gets you.

[Tyr-7BE]

is there a .ICEauthority in your user directory (/home/something)? If there is, then maybe try copying it to /root and see if that works.

[DaMasta]

Does that error only happen when you try to startx as root? If so, there is probably some other messages above that where it says it can't find something. You can view the XF86Config-4 file without going into xwindows. Let us know what you get.

[Orion-X]

this may sound weird, but I deleted that file, tried startx, it didn't work. So I was like, screw it, that's it for me for tonight. I logged into my user account, and was doing some work on it.

out of curiosity, I started customizing my KDE environment on my user account, and boom, I made some mistake which I don't know what, and xwindows booted me back to console. I was like, what da heck, I tried going back in, and every time it fails when I try to do anything (launch apps, open windows...)

I was like, this is just great... so I went back to root just to try this one more time, and all of a sudden it works. So I guess what I had to do was to delete that file, logout (in fact I rebooted once between now and then), and just hope that it works...

But now my normal account is jacked, I don't know what to do... kill it? or try to salvage it? there really insn't anything important in there right now...

Btw, thx for all that help, I guess deleting that thing works afterall. And... what was that you are saying about usb mouse again? what do I have to do? it works in console and all, and it actually works with my other backup PS/2 mouse (my USB is that ifeel mouse from Logitech which seem to refuse to work as PS/2 through an adapter), in X.

I figure I probably need to mknod something but I just don't know what...

And while I am at it, I have seem some screenshots that have transparent xterm windows, how do you do that? Do you know?

thx

[DaMasta]

The transparent eterm thing is easy. It's something like Eterm -x -0 --borderless. I can't remember exactly so do a man eterm. I can't help you on the usb mouse thing. I have not experimented with mine yet. Sorry,