others have given the basic answer to this one.. i'm just here for the
color commentary.
>I've been trying for about 3 weeks to get my mouse working with XWindows. I
>think I've found the problem. 'mouseconfig' finds the mouse on cua1 whereas
>in my /dev directory is the file description mouse -> cua0. But since this
>isn't a file, I can't open it in vi and edit it.
two things:
1: you're correct that the contents of the /dev directory aren't normal
files.. technically, they're known as 'nodes'. that's a funky way of
saying that there's a piece of software (the device driver) behind the
scenes handling communication with the device, but masquerading as part of
the file tree.
one of unix's big selling points is that it treats everything like a file..
hard drives, modems, parts of the CPU, you name it. the node convention
is the curtain that hides the little man who makes hardware i/o look like
any other part of the filesystem. the contents of the /dev directory are
where the little man stashes his raw data, thus those items fall more
heavily in the "don't try this at home" category than other parts of the
file tree. the geekspeke for this is that nodes are 'special' files.
nodes are defined in terms of the amount of data which passes through them
at any given time. hard drives are more efficient if you keep a buffer of
data the same size as a disk sector, and only read or write that much data
in a single shot. thus, drives are known as 'block special' files.
other devices, such as the mouse, need to present small quantities of data
in real-time, so they're capable of being read one byte (the size of a
'char' variable in C) at a time. therefore, the mouse node is a
'character special' file.
symbolic links are a useful way to put a simple, well-known name on
information which might need to hop from file to file. it's really just
another piece of behind-the-curtain work.
basically, a symbolic link is a file that knows just enough to be able to
pass the buck to somebody else. when the user goes to the filesystem and
says, "i need what's in /dev/mouse", the OS pulls up that file, which in
turn says, "oh, wait.. i'm just a link.. the info you really want is over
in /dev/cua0". so the OS locates *that* file, asks the little man behind
the curtain to read the data from it, and passes whatever it gets back as a
response to your original request.
in this particular case, /dev/mouse is a convenient name any X-based
program can use to find the character special file used by the mouse
driver. the kernel has drivers for both serial ports, but your version of
/dev/mouse happened to be pointing to the port the mouse /wasn't/ plugged
into. removing your previous /dev/mouse and relinking it to /dev/cua1
sets up a behind-the-curtain bank shot, letting anyone who needs to use the
mouse find the *correct* driver without having to play all sorts of
seriously ugly/nasty program-by-program configuration games.
2: you're using vi.. *snif*.. i'm so proud. ;-)
>In /etc/sysconfig the mouse is correctly identified as
>MOUSETYPE="microsoft" (it's a normal MS serial mouse) followed by the line,
>'XEMU3=no'. I've tried changing this to yes without any success, so changed
>it back to no.
just to beat the dead horse completely into the ground, the MOUSETYPE
variable tells the kernel to use a serial driver that speaks the MS mouse
protocol, and the XEMU3 variable tells it whether you want to use 3-button
emulation (clicking L & R at the same time == clicking a conjectural
'center' button). neither one tells the system how to actually /find/ the
mouse, but full marks for looking, finding, and tinkering a little.
>What's the answer?
well, you had all the pieces right..look for references, play with a few
things, and if necessary, say "okay, i've RTFM and it didn't help.. how
make do/go?"
you'd be surprised how often this is the correct method. ;-)
mike stone <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
____________________________________________________________________
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Join The Web Consultants Association : Register on our web site Now
Web Consultants Web Site : http://just4u.com/webconsultants
If you lose the instructions All subscription/unsubscribing can be done
directly from our website for all our lists.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
