[plug] Loss of X mouse control

Greg Gamble gregg at maths.uwa.edu.au
Thu Sep 24 02:53:17 WST 1998


According to Nick Bannon:
> Greg Gamble wrote:
> [gpm and X fight over the mouse - is there a better way to use them than
> only running one at a time?]
> 
> Ah - you'll be wanting the gpm "repeater" option. "man gpm" will tell
> you all about it, but the summary is that you run gpm with the -R
> option. gpm will then send a copy of all mouse commands it receives,
> in Mouse Systems protocol, to the named pipe /dev/gpmdata.
> 
> You can then configure X to use the the Mouse Systems mouse it will
> magically find at /dev/gpmdata.

Ahh! ... thanks, now I get it ... and now I understand what Matt
Kemner tried to tell me! (Sorry Matt ... I was still on the learning
curve.) Indeed, I needed to start gpm up at boot with

  gpm -R -m /dev/mouse -t ps2

(where /dev/mouse -> /dev/psaux) since I have a PS/2 mouse and then tell 
X in the XF86Config file that the Pointer has

  Protocol        "MouseSystems"
  Device          "/dev/gpmdata"

and yes it does work!! Very nice!

  Regards,
  Greg Gamble <gregg at maths.uwa.edu.au>


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