Configuring X

Dman, of debian-user, made a nice little summary³ that I'm going to copy wholesale:

If you want mouse in console and X:

• gpm reads from the mouse device itself. With a PS/2 mouse this is /dev/psaux. With a USB mouse (and devfs, I haven't used USB without devfs) it is /dev/input/mice. gpm needs to be told the correct protocol to use. For many modern mice (including mine) the protocol is 'imps2'.

• gpm needs to repeat with protocol 'raw'. It repeats through a named pipe, named /etc/gpmdata.

• X needs to read from /etc/gpmdata and use the same protocol that gpm is using. In the case of my mice that protocol is "IMPS/2".

If you want mouse in X only:

• X reads from the mouse device itself. With a PS/2 mouse this is /dev/psaux. With a USB mouse (and devfs, I haven't used USB without devfs) it is /dev/input/mice. X needs to be told the correct protocol to use. For many modern mice (including mine) the protocol is 'IMPS/2'.

Thanks, Dman!

I also needed to edit my /etc/X11/XF86-Config-4 manually to include the other mouse, as per a suggestion on debian-laptop⁴.

I added:

Section "InputDevice"
        Identifier      "Logitech Mouse"
        Driver          "mouse"
        Option          "SendCoreEvents"        "true"
        Option          "Device"                "/dev/input/mice"
        Option          "Protocol"              "ImPS/2"
        Option          "Emulate3Buttons"       "true"
        Option          "ZAxisMapping"          "4 5"
EndSection

and the ``Logitech'' line in the following section:

Section "ServerLayout"
        Identifier      "Default Layout"
        Screen          "Default Screen"
        InputDevice     "Generic Keyboard"
        InputDevice     "Configured Mouse"
        InputDevice     "Logitech Mouse"
EndSection

For reference, my /etc/gpm.conf looks like this:

device=/dev/input/mice
responsiveness=30
repeat_type=raw
type=imps2
append=""
sample_rate=

The important clauses there are the device, the repeat type, and the type. Mine is ImPS/2 (imps2, because it has a scrolly wheel; yours might just be plain old PS/2 ps2).