Bug 141345

Summary:	GPM support in console sessions
Product:	[openSUSE] SUSE Linux 10.1	Reporter:	Michael Stather <kontakt>
Component:	Basesystem	Assignee:	Michal Marek <mmarek>
Status:	RESOLVED DUPLICATE	QA Contact:	E-mail List <qa-bugs>
Severity:	Enhancement
Priority:	P5 - None
Version:	Alpha 4
Target Milestone:	---
Hardware:	Other
OS:	Other
Whiteboard:
Found By:	Other	Services Priority:
Business Priority:		Blocker:	---
Marketing QA Status:	---	IT Deployment:	---

Description Michael Stather 2006-01-03 23:14:18 UTC

It would be really nice to have GPM support by default in console runlevels, so that you have mouse support in midnight commander for example. Using "gpm -m /dev/input/mice -t ps2" works just fine.

Comment 1 Dr. Werner Fink 2006-01-09 11:34:56 UTC

Not all mices are ps2

Comment 2 Michal Marek 2006-01-09 12:03:30 UTC

Select your mouse type in
    yast -> Hardware -> Mouse Model

configure gpm to start automatically in
    yast -> System -> System Services (Runlevel)

Unfortunately, yast doesn't do that automatically during installation.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 114919 ***

Comment 3 Michael Stather 2006-01-09 18:47:17 UTC

I get this when I want to start GPM by the services manager:

Neither the variables MOUSEDEVICE and MOUSETYPE nor the variable GPM_PARAM
is set in /etc/sysconfig/mouse

My mouse type is set to "ImExPS/2 Logitech Explorer Mouse"

Comment 4 Michael Stather 2006-01-09 18:51:56 UTC

I just saw in the attached bug that I have to run YaST2 to update the settings.
IMO this is not appropriate since all the system settings should be there after installation. Also SaX2 overwrites my hand-written xorg.conf every time I run it (since the binary ATI drivers can´t be configured with SAX).

Comment 5 Michal Marek 2006-01-09 21:20:32 UTC

Well, you can set

MOUSEDEVICE="/dev/input/mice"
...
MOUSETYPE="ps2"

in /etc/sysconfig/mouse, if you don't want to do it via yast.

Comment 6 Michael Stather 2006-01-09 21:40:05 UTC

Thanks :)
But I´m looking for bugs in SuSE to make it better, I know how to create thouse entries, I´m just thinking of "the average user".
Shouldn´t the configuration be complete after setup?

Comment 7 Michal Marek 2006-01-09 22:32:10 UTC

The yast guys probably assumed that an average user will stick to X11, where
the mouse is either detected (by X + kernel), or it's not and yast can't do
anything about it.

The problem with gpm is that it can behave quite funny if you don't get the
mouse type/device right, so I can't just hardcode "-m /dev/input/mice -t ps2"
in the init script -- it needs to be configured before it's run. But since
most users probably won't need gpm at all, they shouldn't be bothered by
another configuration dialog during the installation.

The mouse dialog shout still appear in a text-mode installation though (can't
check it ATM).

Maybe I could change the error message in the init script to be easier to
understand (eg. "run 'yast2 mouse' as root to configure console mouse" or
something like that), do you think that would help a bit?

Comment 8 Michael Stather 2006-01-09 23:37:28 UTC

When SuSE is installed SAX2 (which is also "YAST2 mouse") runs automatically and detects a configuration for both mouse, graphics card display which is then displayed on the "hardware summary" page at the end of the installation (and then written to xorg.conf). So why doesn´t SAX2 set it then?
It´s not really a big thing IMHO since not many user use GPM, but if it could be done in an easy way why not.