Mouse does not work after x start

S

supergee8

I'm relatively new to Unix, so it has been a steep learning curve for me, but I was finally able to get my mouse working in KDE (FreeBSD 10-RC5) and believe this will work for GNOME also though not tested. I found no suitable answers, after searching for two weeks both here and on other how to sites for FreeBSD 10-RC5.

The answer for me turned out to be simple. I modified the rc.conf in the following way. Hopefully this helps others that faced or face this problem, with FreeBSD 10-RC5 (strange 9.2 worked very well, almost went back to it). The rest of rc.conf I left alone except commenting out the local_startup line.

Code: 
moused_enable="NO"
moused_type="AUTO"
 
What kind of mouse? USB or PS/2? USB mice automatically load moused(8) whereas for PS/2 it has to be enabled in /etc/rc.conf.

You might want to turn on both HAL and DBUS. HAL isn't strictly necessary but X requires a slightly different configuration without it.

viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4224
 
Some random observations. Upon one install, including the x11/nvidia-driver, I found that the mouse froze if I installed using WITH_NEW_XORG. Rebuilding sysutils/hal didn't help. (However, I didn't rebuild sysutils/tmux.i) What did work was removing WITH_NEW_XORG from /etc/make.conf (By the way, I know our mods love tags, what sort of tag should be used around WITH_NEW_XORG? It's not a command, and using quote seems a bit odd), remove x11-servers/xorg-server and then reinstalling it.

Other solutions I've seen that didn't work for me, were enabling moused in /etc/rc.conf and adding an option to /etc/X11/xorg.conf which I've already forgotten (as it didn't work for me) about stopping automatic adding of devices.

On a couple of other machines though, both using Intel cards (Mods, not trying to make fun of the demands for tagging--well, maybe I am, a little bit, but in this case, Intel is a proper name, so it seems correct to not give it the file tag), I had no trouble--however, those were laptops using touchpads, whereas the machine with a non-working mouse was a tower with a USB mouse. Unfortunately, that particular machine is the one that I use for work, (and I need a GUI for some aspects of work) so I can't experiment too much. As you see from @supergee8's post, the exact opposite of enabling moused worked for them.

[EDIT]
I should add, this was on a fresh installation of 10-RC5, not an earlier install that was upgraded.
 
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To add a little more information. On one of the laptops, though the touchpad worked, an external mouse didn't. Following @wblock's suggestion, I wound up doing deinstall and reinstall on hal, dbus and tmux. Upon reboot (as hal wouldn't start after reinstall), the mouse worked. So, that might be the solution.
 
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I use a wireless mouse (USB of course), but tried both a wired USB and PS2, with the same issues. I enable both hald and dbus in my rc.conf. Maybe it's an issue with my motherboard, but now everything works as it did with FreeBSD 9.2 and I learned a great deal about other issues while searching for a solution to my problem. As stated earlier, this is a steep learning curve for myself
 
Just tried a fresh install on the laptop, and wasn't able to duplicate the problem. So, there might have been some other factor I'm missing on the workstation. Ran into a different oddity in the fresh install--in an effort to try to figure out if it was a pkg or port issue, I tried pkg install xorg-server and it couldn't find xorg-server. (As well as a few other packages). Then, I installed some other X related packages with pkg install one of which installed graphics/libGL which has some issues (mentioned in UPDATING and I had to reinstall that following the UPDATING instructions before being able to install x11-servers/xorg-server.
 
And to add a little more information for anyone who comes across this thread. Tried another test install on a laptop with onboard Intel graphics card, and i7 processor.

I first tried to install x11-servers/xorg-server from packages. However, I got a response that it (pkgng, or should I say pkg?) couldn't find xorg-server. So, I used ports. I've always enabled hald but chose, this time, to neither choose it nor devd to see what would happen.

In addition, I found that I still have put
Code: 
WITH_NEW_XORG=yes
in /etc/make.conf or it will pull in xorg-server-1.7.7-something.

Now, when I did this install, choosing neither hald nor devd, I thought I might have to follow @wblock's suggestion of adding lines to /etc/X11/xorg.conf mentioned in a thread that I can't find right now, lines indicating that X should not add devices. However, once I installed drivers for the keyboard and mouse and started X, both the laptop's touchpad and an external wired USB mouse worked without problems. I have NOT yet tried this on the machine that previously gave me problems though.
 
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Went into work early today to try on that workstation with a fresh install.
This time, I installed as I had on the laptop, adding the line for new xorg to /etc/make.conf, choosing neither hald nor devd. The mouse worked without a problem. So, whatever I ran into last time was either a one time thing or something that has been fixed in updates since my last attempt.
 
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