[lug] mouse going crazy in linux

[Hugh Brown]

karl horlen wrote:
> I recently installed a system with a 2.6.9-42 kernel
> on it.  It's working great except for one quirky
> thing.  The mouse doesn't seem to work properly.  
> 
> The minute you move the mouse, whether in a console or
> X, a message gets spit out:
> 
> psmouse.c Wheel Mouse @isa0060/serial/input0 lost
> synchronization throwing 2 bytes away.
> 
> If you're on a console you can recover from it fairly
> easy.  If you're in X it starts firing off random
> clicks and X is unusable.  
> 
> I've tried to init 3 from the console but it appears
> that X doesn't want to completely relinquish the tty
> it normally runs on.  
> 
> Here's the rub though.  I have a kvm hooked up to both
> a windows box and the linux box that share one
> kb/monitor.  I haven't fully confirmed this but I
> believe X and the mouse works fine if you boot to
> linux and never use the kvm to switch to the windows
> box.  
> 
> It seems that the minute you kvm switch to the xp box
> and then switch back to linux that's when I believe
> the trouble starts.  At that point the mouse is hosed
> for the session.  The consoles are usable but X isn't.
>  I'd like to be able to use X for webbrowsing so I can
> find documentation etc without having to switch back
> and forth between the linux / win boxes.
> 
> I didn't have this problem when I used the KVM with
> the last 2.4 kernel installed on the linux box.  The
> system, the keyboard, the mouse, the video card, and
> the KVM are all identical.  The only thing that has
> changed is my monitor.  I'm not sure why that would
> effect the mouse though. 
> 
> Would anybody have any suggestions how to fix this?
> 
> I checked my xorg.conf and it looks like the mouse
> protocol is probably being set correctly to:
> 
> IMPS/2
> 
> thanks
> 


In past experience, broken mouse input is the result of X expecting PS/2 
and getting IMPS/2 or vice versa.

I've also had kvm's that couldn't cope with wheel mice and I had to 
revert IMPS/2 to PS/2 in order to avoid the broken behavior.

Hugh