[NTLUG:Discuss] Funky mouse behavior in FC3

[Thomas Cameron]

On Thu, 2005-06-16 at 07:07 -0500, lonny.dahl at verizon.com wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> Over the weekend, I purchased an Airlink 4 port KVM switch and connected it
> to 3 of my computers.  One is a FC3 64 bit machine, one is an old
> Smoothwall box and the other is our old dual boot Weenderz 98/FC3 box.  All
> 3 boxes boot up ok, I get video on all, keyboards work on all, but the dual
> boot box now is doing some funky things with the mouse.  I know it's a FC
> thing because the mouse works fine in Weenderz.  What it's doing is, once
> the machine boots to the login screen, moving the mouse around causes it to
> jump to the far lower left corner of the screen and it acts like it's
> clicking on apps as it goes over them.  If you log into a user session, it
> does the same thing.  If you move it VERY slowly, it'll move just a bit in
> the direction you're moving it to, but then jumps right back to the lower
> left corner.  If you get it to pass over an icon on the panel, it brings up
> that app like you clicked on it.
> 
> I know this has to be a configuration issue, but have no idea where to go
> to see how to fix it.  I've checked the /etc/X11/XFree86.conf file and the
> mouse seems to be configured correctly there.  It has to have something to
> do with X because it seems to work properly on a text session when booting
> into userlevel 3.  I have also tried removing the computer from the KVM
> switch and connecting the monitor, mouse and keyboard directly to the
> computer, but it's doing the same thing, so it's obvious a configuration
> file somewhere has been changed.
> 
> Any ideas what to look for?

Change the kernel line in your grub.conf to look like this:

kernel /vmlinuz-[your kernel] ro root=LABEL=/ psmouse.proto=bare

Reboot.  You will lose your scroll button, which bites big time, but
your mouse will work otherwise.

This is a known issue with some KVM switches (Belkin I think is most
common).

Thomas