[ltp] Kernel 2.6 and two mice

[Edi Weitz]

Hi!

For various reasons I've recently completely re-installed Linux on my
trusty two-year old T23. Before that I was using Gentoo 1.1a and then
SuSE 9.0, both with 2.4 kernels. Now I'm using Debian testing with a
2.6.6 kernel and I'm running into problems with my mice.

My setup is that I normally use an old MS IntelliEye USB mouse with a
scroll wheel. If I'm on the road I don't take it with me and I want to
be able to use the trackpoint for scrolling (i.e. I can scroll while I
press button 2 and I can emulate a button 2 press by pressing buttons
1 and 3 at the same time). This worked fine with 2.4 kernels and the
relevant part from my XF86Config looked like this:

  Section "ServerFlags"
    Option       "AllowMouseOpenFail"
  EndSection

  Section "InputDevice"
    Driver       "mouse"
    Identifier   "Mouse[1]"
    Option       "ButtonNumber" "3"
    Option       "Device" "/dev/psaux"
    Option       "Protocol" "PS/2"
    Option       "Emulate3Buttons" "on"
    Option       "Emulate3Timeout" "50"
    Option       "EmulateWheel" "on"
    Option       "EmulateWheelButton" "2"
  EndSection

  Section "InputDevice"
    Driver       "mouse"
    Identifier   "Mouse[2]"
    Option       "ButtonNumber" "5"
    Option       "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
    Option       "Protocol" "imps/2"
    Option       "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
  EndSection

  Section "ServerLayout"
    InputDevice  "Mouse[1]" "CorePointer"
    InputDevice  "Mouse[2]" "SendCoreEvents"
    # more stuff
  EndSection

With 2.6.6 this still works but there's an annoying catch: If I've
used the trackpoint for scrolling (pressing button 2) then when I
release button 2 this is interpreted as a button 2 release (which it
shouldn't) resulting in things like the X clipboard being pasted into
my xterm.

Obviously, this is due to kernel 2.6 piping /all/ mouse events through
/dev/input/mice so I thought the solution would be to replace
/dev/psaux with /dev/input/mouse0 and /dev/input/mice with
/dev/input/mouse1 which seems to be the way mice are handled in 2.6.

Now, this works fine and exactly as it should but only until I unplug
the USB mouse. If I plug it back in again (or if it wasn't plugged in
at boot time and I plug it in later) /dev/input/mouse1 doesn't
work. /dev/input/mice /does/ work, though.

To be more precise: With the USB mouse plugged in at boot time if I
move it I can see (with cat) output on /dev/input/mice as well as
/dev/input/mouse1. If I unplug and then re-plug the USB mouse I can
still see output on /dev/input/mice but /not/ on /dev/input/mouse1
anymore. This doesn't look like an X problem to me but rather
something with the kernel.

It doesn't make a difference whether I use hotplug or not and I don't
think it should because I've compiled in all relevant parts into the
kernel, no modules.

Does anybody have an idea what I'm doing wrong?

Thanks in advance,
Edi.