Re: I hate those mices [pronounced meeses] to pieces!

At 12:58 PM 8/21/2003 -0400, you wrote:
>I've been very fortunate so far (for a newbie) getting SuSE 8.2 to work
>on my PCG-R505DSP, thanks in large part to this list.  However, I'm
>stuck on one problem that stumps me.
>
>I use the touchpad (ps2aux) mouse when I'm not in my office and am
>undocked, and I use a Logitech Cordless Tackman Wheel (imps2) when I
>am.  Of course this was a non-issue in WinXP.  How do I make this a
>non-issue in Linux?  Meaning, I want the machine to switch between them
>automatically.

Well, I have a GR390 here and run 8.2 myself.  Something interesting 
happens when you run the installer, which you may or may not have 
noticed.  Please indulge my somewhat obvious recap of the installation 
process in order to elaborate:

1] You define all your install specs (partitions, packages, modules, etc)
2] SuSE installs on the machine
3] Reboot
4] Post-install configuration
5] System becomes available for use

At the begining of 1, you have the means to do an initial configuration 
which includes modules.  Here you can preload the USB modules, amongst 
others.  Once the GUI starts and goes thru the initial config stuff (KB, 
etc), you have the opportunity to customize the install and one of these is 
the pointing device.  I should point out that changing the pointer here 
seems to center more upon the install than anything else.  Now lets jump 
ahead to 4.

One of the post-install config items sets up the X Server.  Here there's an 
option to configure the mouse, and in my case two instances show 
up.  Presumably, one is for the touchpad and the other for the external 
mouse, because both devices function concurrently.  The question is, which 
is which, because they're both configured identically with the exception of 
the device name (one is /dev/imps2 and the other, I think, 
/dev/mouse).  Both devices work correctly, even after the system becomes 
available (#5) and remain so until the system is rebooted.

Here's the interesting part (in my case, at least): When the machine boots 
for the first time after that initial use (ie. shut it down for the night 
and fire it up the next day), SuSE claims to have found new hardware, 
namely a pointing device.  After getting beyond this point, all of a sudden 
only one of the pointing devices work.  Which one depends entirely on 
whether the external mouse is plugged in or not (I have tried it both 
ways), and that is the device that is available from that point on 
--meaning, if you choose the touchpad, then the  external mouse ceases to 
work, whereas the external mouse no longer works if you choose the 
touchpad.  This situation carries through with both gpm and the x pointer.


>If I can't have 'automatically', how close can I get?

I seem to recall that the X config file gets rewritten if the hardware 
detection routine picks up another pointing device change down the 
road.  In my experience, this is each time the external mouse is 
disconnected or reconnected, as the case may be.  I know this isn't much 
help in terms of what you were asking for, but if you (or anyone) has seen 
the same situation happen...

Incidentally, this kind of "loss" also seems to happen with Mandrake and 
RedHat (in their case, if kudzu runs).  Unfortunately, I don't think it 
wise to disable the detection process when it comes to a laptop, given that 
the config can change more readily than on a desktop (eg. mouse/no mouse, 
pcmcia devices, usb devices, external monitors, docking ports, etc.)

G


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