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3 External Mice
This took me a while to figure out. For whatever reason, I couldn’t just plug in
my external USB mouse (which I needed in order to not kill my wrist on that
damn trackpad!
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) and have it work. Instead, like with the rest of this install, I
went through a whole song and dance about it. The results follow.
Caveat: This is with the Dell Logitech scrolly-wheel mouse I have. YMMV.
3.1 Necessary kernel modules
To see what’s loaded, do a ‘/sbin/lsmod‘. For USB input devices in general,
you will need the following:
• usb
• evdev
• mousedev
• keybdev
I’m pretty sure that for just USB mice, just usb and mousedev are necessary,
but putting them all in as modules can’t hurt — an usused module doesn’t
matter.
Also make sure that you’re loading these modules at boot time: put them
in /etc/modules.
USB by itself isn’t a module; it needs to be aliased to either usb-ohci or
usb-uhci. For the Dell I8k, you want the usb-uhci.
Alias the module by editing /etc/modutils/aliases, and put in the fol-
lowing lines:
alias usb usb-uhci
post-install usb modprobe hid
Then run update-modules, and those aliases will get stuck in your /etc/modules.conf.
Don’t just edit this file by hand; your changes will get overwritten!
Got all that? Excellent. Reboot if you want (but you don’t need to – this is
Linux!), or just modprobe usb evdev mousedev keybdev, and continue! (You
don’t need to modprobe usb-uhci, because now you’ve aliased that to usb.)
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As it has been noted, what works for some may not work for others. I personally cannot
use a flat keyboard or a trackpad mouse, but others say that my ergonomic keyboard and
external mouse hurt their wrists. As with all matters of personal preference, YMMV.
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