Everything was working fine and dandy installing Puppy 1.0.6 (corrected: I'd said 1.0.7 originally) on my Compaq Armada M300 -- I even managed to get an old 802.11a wireless card to work. Then, I tried hooking up a wireless USB mouse (Microsoft Wireless Notebook Optical Mouse) and now I'm pretty much mouseless.
First, I hooked up the transmitter to the USB port and ran the Mouse/Keyboard wizard. After picking USB mouse with scroll wheel, nothing actually happened, so I rebooted. The result was disastrous -- the computer seemed to be moving the pointer at random up and down, popping up the right-click menu over and over. Ctl+Alt+Del (which fortunately seems to do the same thing as Ctl+Alt+Bksp) got me out to the prompt with the information to delete /etc/mousebuttons.
Going back into xwin, though, I get the following:
Enter mouse type serial, ps/2, usb [ps/2]: (enter)
modprobe: Can't locate module psmouse
You have selected psaux as your mouse device
This information is saved in file /etc/mousedevice
After telling it that I don't have a wheel, X starts. Now, my touchpad mouse works again... except for the buttons. The right-click seems to work, but also seems to automatically click when I first move the pointer.
Removing the offending USB mouse transmitter and rebooting, power cycling, praying, and cursing doesn't seem to help. I'm guessing that the missing module is to blame. gtkfind didn't find anything called psmouse.
Should I boot from the CDROM and find psmouse (or would it be psmouse.o? I'm a Linux newbie) and copy it to the corresponding HD location? And is there any way to make my wireless mouse work, or will the Microsoft-branded mouse be forever banned from my Linux laptop's ports?
Laptop touchpad mouse: can't locate module psmouse
Strange. I wasn't able to make the laptop's built-in mouse work even when booting from a 1.0.6 or 1.0.7 CDrom. I tried an old serial mouse, but never could get it to respond to any port (mouse itself may be bad). Finally, I plugged in a wired USB mouse and turned on the laptop, preparing to use c-a-bksp to try to convince Puppy to use it... and voila, the touchpad was working again! It's still working now, with the USB mouse unplugged.
Now that it's working, I'm loathe to delete /etc/mousebuttons again for fear of breaking it again. (And I call myself a geek, for shame!) But I'll do it if anyone needs me to get more information about the situation.
Note that I didn't see the modprobe error when running 1.0.7 because of its "enhanced" full-screen mouse selection wizard. I hope there's a log file somewhere. I'd have to say, I somewhat prefer the old scrolling-text method of 1.0.6 (though the boot option list in 1.0.7 is a great enhancement).
Now that it's working, I'm loathe to delete /etc/mousebuttons again for fear of breaking it again. (And I call myself a geek, for shame!) But I'll do it if anyone needs me to get more information about the situation.
Note that I didn't see the modprobe error when running 1.0.7 because of its "enhanced" full-screen mouse selection wizard. I hope there's a log file somewhere. I'd have to say, I somewhat prefer the old scrolling-text method of 1.0.6 (though the boot option list in 1.0.7 is a great enhancement).