NOOB, Mouse Question

[esstee]

am having some trouble getting knoppix to recognise my serial mouse, is there a command i can enter to tell knoppix i have a serial mouse at tty0 during boot up? keeping in mind i have no mouse access, all replies greatly accepted
thanks

[eon]

There are a couple of mouse cheatcodes, but they don't seem to apply to your situation.
In your place I would do <alt>+<ctrl>+<F2> that key combination should put you into a shell.
Then type 'dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xfree86" <enter> You should then get a chance to
reconfigure your entire XF86 configuration. You might have to run through the program a few times to get it set up right. Hope that helps.

[darinr]

I am having the same problem with my serial mouse. I know its old and stuff blah blah but its all I have at the moment.

I asked someone what to do, tried 3 different things, the last one worked. The problem is I forgot the 'cheat code' at boot he told me to enter! It was x*something, like xserver, or xsession or xsystem...etc

It is detected as a ps/2 mouse. I ran expert mode and tried to configure it at tty0 where it is, as microsoft serial and that didnt work...

Tried looking in the cheat code list but the closest i saw was xserver and it requires a parameter, i dont think this other x*? did.

Anyone help?

[oscar]

edit /etc/X11/XF86config-4 to something like this and then type crl-alt-bckspace



# PS/2 Mouse not detected
InputDevice "Serial Mouse" "CorePointer"
# USB Mouse not detected


What I know that is not cheatcode for this bug in knoppix.
I had asked here to fix this for years with no answer.
I had asked Kano (kanotix) and he fix the bug in 3 days. Kanotix detects serial mouse fine since.
I had asked the same thing to Warren and he put a cheatcode for forcing serial mouse detection in his Mepis live-cd

[darinr]

Ok thanks.

Well the real reason I wanted my mouse to work, is basically I want to install knoppix to my spare hard drive (Not C: [ or dev/hda1 ]. The problem with this is I am a complete noob to linux/knoppix any *nix really, and have zero clue how to navigate menus using only the keyboard. I tried learning (I expect it might take a week to get good at it, not cause im stupid but cause im use to how windoze works not linux) but just spent hours and didnt accomplish much, kept messing up and crashing KDE.

I was thinking of installing to a HDD instead of just tohd= at the boot prompt (just copies the image to a disk, doesnt install knoppix), cause I thought that might be better. If I could install and save my config, perhaps my mouse would work.

This part is important, maybe it will help someone know what cheat code to tell me. I *believe* that the cheat code I used to get my mouse to work, basically just told knoppix to boot with an older version of the linux kernel, if I am not mistaken? (I hope this was it) How would I do that?

Here is some info of what my system has:
Knoppix v4.0.2 CD (Thats the version of knoppix i have on CD)
-- about 200 MB ram, pentium 233 Mhz, 60 gig HD (this is hda1 or C:\)
-- 8 gig HD (The one I want to install knoppix to)
-- floppy drive, CD rom drive, 2 USB ports, com1 and com2, LPT1, Ethernet card
-- Old style AT port (this is like a ps/2 port but bigger, and is what I have my ps/2 keyboard connected to using a ps/2 to AT adapter)

My mouse is connected to COM1 (tty0) serial port. It is an OLD tandy combi mouse. Just a generic two button serial mouse. I have an optical ps/2 mouse, but the problem remains that I dont have any place to plug it into.

I tried figuring it out. Every time I use mouseconfig or whatever that utility is that modifys and saves your XF86config-4, the mouse still doesnt work. I think perhaps its cause that file is saved on a ram disk and poofs when you reboot?

It just seems very difficult to format and partition a drive and then install knoppix when I dont have any mouse functionality, so any ideas would be appriciated. Im not too lazy so I am trying other things myself.

[oscar]

I *believe* that the cheat code I used to get my mouse to work, basically just told knoppix to boot with an older version of the linux kernel, if I am not mistaken?


yes, booting with kernel 2.4 the serial mouse is detected. The problem is with kernel 2.6

read this to learn how to emulate the mouse using the keypad

http://www.maysville-linux-users-group.org/article5.html

[oscar]

I *believe* that the cheat code I used to get my mouse to work, basically just told knoppix to boot with an older version of the linux kernel, if I am not mistaken?


yes, booting with kernel 2.4 the serial mouse is detected. The problem is with kernel 2.6

read this to learn how to emulate the mouse using the keypad

http://www.maysville-linux-users-group.org/article5.html

[darinr]

Note: This post is pretty detailed. If you want to skip the detailed parts, here is a summary:

Summary:

Still cant access the k-menu in KDE using the mouse pointer keyboard trick. Cannot mount any hard drives, or boot from a knoppix iso that is on a hard drive, or copy knoppix to a hard drive. Ethernet isnt working either (worked fine when i booted with the cheat code I recieved, then later forgot.)

So, I am still at a loss, anyone know some more stuff I could try? :(

Detailed:
Ok, I found out how to move the 'mouse' pointer with the keyboard...

The reason I was asking for some kind of mouse functionality, was for accessing the 'K-menu'. I spent over an hour trying to 'click' 'double-click' 'right-click' etc all over and around the k-menu (using the keyboard mouse shift+numlock thing), with zero success. A window comes up with options allowing me to edit the menu, configure it, delete it, etc etc, but not acess it like normal. This is in KDE. Try it and tell me if it does the same thing for you.

Before I say this, I want to say that knoppix is pretty cool, I have gotten it to work before (on an old computer) with not too much extraineous effort. However I didnt use it much, and I have been using dos and windows all my life, so my knowledge of *nix and KDE is highly limited. I just have to break through these small obsticals so I can work with it and learn...

To bring you up to speed, I had asked someone on the net the other night what I could do to fix my mouse, I had no idea my ethernet wasnt working or my hard drives were not able to mount in knoppix either, simply because when my mouse doesnt move, an operating system seems to lose most of its functionality for me... so i never got that far at the time.

So I asked this guy, and he told me to boot with a specific 'cheat code', or option at the knoppix boot screen. I was so excited when it worked, my mouse was actually detected as serial mouse at tty0. I was so excited that when i rebooted after visiting windoze for something, I completely forgot the 'cheat code'! I don't even remember the guys name because I just 'met' him in a chat that night, we talked for about 3 minutes only.

The code was x*something, like xsession or xserver... i completely forgot everything except it started with x. After trying a whole bunch of other stuff, I went back to find him, to no avail, and so this is whats up now:

After testing the mouse pointer movement using my keyboard, i noticed that my ethernet wasnt working at all, and both hard drives couldnt be mounted. When I used this guy's cheat code, I had immediate internet connectivity, and I believe my hard drives were mountable as well.

So since shell commands look like alien poetry to me, I wanted to use the graphical desktop KDE to get into applications that would allow me to either: A) Install knoppix to my spare hard drive, or B) Save my configuration so I dont have to spend 30-45 minutes configuring every time I reboot. I can do neither, knoppix reports something like 'failed to mount hda1' or 'the drive isnt mountable' when i tell it to copy knoppix to hard drive (tohd=/dev/hda1, also tohd=/dev/hdb), or even read it from the hard drive (fromhd=/dev/hda1, also fromhd=/dev/hdb).

When I am in KDE, it seems my primary C: drive is called hda1, and my D: drive is called hdb . I have my first physical drive partitioned in half, and its about 50 Gigs in size. Thats drive C: and E: when I am in windows. My second physical drive is 8 Gigs and is drive D: in windows. So I have 2 hard drives in reality, one is partitioned in half, the other isnt, so I have C: D: and E: (God only knows why the first hard-drive is C: and E:, and not C: and D: )

I strongly beleive that using the kernel version 2.4 would fix all this mess, but try as I do, I seem unable to use it, because it isnt included in the CD I ordered, and I am unable to load the old knoppix i put on my hard drive 4 hours ago...

So I have to either figure out how to use kernel 2.4, or figure out what that cheat code was . . It probably loaded some kind of 'old compatability' setting. I remember the guy (the cheat code guy I talked to) mentioning something like that, during our brief talk.

Help?

-Clueless windoze user.

[oscar]

The last knoppix has not cheatcode for old kernel 2.4

For serial mouse support and for installing to hd download kanotix (it is knoppix but better). The lite version has not Open Office. For sure download the 699MB ISO.

http://debian.tu-bs.de/kanotix/KANOTIX-current/

http://forum.kanotix.net/index.php?&newlang=eng

[darinr]

Tried the Kanotix, however since I don't have a CD burner and wont have access to one or anything for a little bit, I had to try some other stuff. Boot floppies? I see reams of info on making boot floppies from a non existant boot.img file thats suppose to be in the knoppix dir of the ISO file, and a non existant mkfloppy.bat. I found all this non-useful information after reading dozens of webpages that all assume you have booted knoppix (or kanotix, depending on which page i was reading), and this isnt practical in my situation. Yeah, lets make a boot floppy when we already booted. Seems a suprise that someone cant migrate easy with older hardware from windoze.

This is day 4. I have spent over 12 hours per day trying to get this bloody thing to work. So, don't think im being lazy, im not, I am trying my best.

All I have to do is somehow not use that new kernel thingy and all my hardware would work. Whatever the newer kernel does its not hospitable to something in my comp. I turned 'whatever' it was that was doing it off, so it is theoretically possible to boot knoppix from the new CD I have.

However no one knows what the boot option was I used, and im kicking myself for forgetting. I doubt its practical that I should assume anyone here would know it, so lets forget that.

My other solution is boot with the kernel version 2.4 ... I am not sure if I need to go back all the way to 2.4, but at least i know that one works.

I am beginning to think all this isnt really worth it?

I have tried everything i could think of, I cant seem to boot using fromiso because the kernel wont mount my hard drives (thats where the iso and other files it needs are).

Anyone have some knoppix boot disk images that use older versions of the kernel (and the other stuff it requires) ?

Whats the difference between syslinux and isolinux??