Mouse (and sound) troubles fixed

Since a time ago, I had some strange mouse (and sound) problems. I was using a 2.6.11-gentoo-r6 kernel compiled manually with everything working. The only strange thing was some message appearing at boot time (more exactly when /etc/init.d/alsasound was started) pointing me at the fact that there was a problem with the program reading the file "/etc/asound.state". I took a look into that file, but all I saw were @'s and other strange signs, so it seemed it was a binary one. Normally there are no binary files in /etc, so I thought it might be corrupted and I removed the file. (In fact: it is the file where your mixer levels are stored, so removing it couldn't cause any problems) Since then, sound wasn't working anymore.

Another problem I had, was when I compiled a new 2.6.12 kernel starting from the old .config file and using "make menuconfig". When booting that kernel, my USB-mouse didn't work anymore. Touchpad and the "clit" (that little "button" between the g and h on some laptopkeyboards) worked perfect. It even didn't work anymore when I recompiled the old 2.6.11 kernel with the config gathered from "zcat /proc/config.gz > .config" because I lost the original one. So these two 2.6.11 kernels should be identical, but the newly compiled one didn't make my USB-mouse work the way the old one did. Strange stuff, isn't it?

So, thanks to the nice guys on bcol the problem is solved now. In my /etc/X11/xorg.conf file, I had three sections "InputDevice": one for my keyboard and two for my mice (USB and touchpad/clit). One was using /dev/input/mouse0, the other one /dev/input/mouse1. Toni (Dutch weblog) explained me that I could better use /dev/input/mice as this is some virtual device combining the input from all mouse-devices. I even shouldn't merge the two sections and there options, just change the device. And yes, this works! And with the new kernel, I also have sound working! There must be some file corrupt in the old kernel image. Thanks, Toni!

Next thing on the list is following the Gentoo Power Management Guide, when I have some time.