X crash with unplugged wireless mouse

[Mark C. Allman]

On Wed, 2007-09-12 at 18:29 +0100, Federico Marziali wrote:

> Hello everyone!
> I run FC6 on an Acer TM8003 Laptop. I bought a cordless Logitech V450
> Wireless mouse and added the following specific lines in my xorg.conf
> (config thanks to the Gentoo wiki
> http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Advanced_Mouse/Individual_Configurations
> ):
> 
> Section "ServerLayout"
> ...............
> ...............
> 	InputDevice "V450" "AlwaysCore"
> EndSection
> 
> Section "InputDevice"
> 	Identifier "V450"
> 	Driver "evdev"
> 	Option "Device" "/dev/input/event3"
> 	Option "HWHEELRelativeAxisButtons" "7 6"
> EndSection
> 
> I have added also the following line, that I thought should help in
> case I started the machine forgetting to plug the mouse radio receiver
> into a USB port (i.e. X can't find the V450):
> 
> Section "Serverflags"
> 	Option "AllowMouseOpenFail" "true"
> EndSection
> 
> The mouse works perfectly (also the horizontal scrolling), but
> everything goes wrong if I forget to plug the wireless receiver before
> the Linux kernel is loaded. In such a case, immediately after the
> loading the driver "udev", the screen goes completely blank and apart
> from a spare hard drive activity nothing happens; the usual fedora
> bootstrap logo with the sequence of loading stuff does not appear and
> despite all keys combinations I tried it looks like there is no way to
> interact with the machine. The point is that Linux itself seems not to
> be frozen, since pressing the power button (not leaving it pressed for
> 4 sec, which actually cuts the power, just pressing it "shortly")
> starts the shutdown sequence, which takes a while and I presume goes
> fine (nothing in var/spool/mail/root... so everything ok?!!)
> So I guess the problem is that X does not load because of evdev does
> not find the wireless receiver? Is the AllowMouseOpenFail option not
> working?
> Is there a way to have X start even if the cordless mouse is not plugged in?
> 
> I'm a newbie, so I could not think of anything better than look into
> /var/log/messages and what I actually found are the gdm messages:
> gdm_slave_xioerror_handler: Fatal X error - Restarting :0
> 
> And after 3 of them:
> Sep 12 17:49:33 localhost gdm[3128]: gdm_slave_xioerror_handler: Fatal
> X error - Restarting :0
> Sep 12 17:49:33 localhost gdm[2989]: deal_with_x_crashes: Running the
> XKeepsCrashing script
> Sep 12 17:49:34 localhost gpm[2606]: *** info [client.c(137)]:
> Sep 12 17:49:34 localhost gpm[2606]: Connecting at fd 2
> 
> Then I press the shutdown button and the messages are:
> Sep 12 17:50:53 localhost shutdown[3275]: shutting down for system halt
> Sep 12 17:50:53 localhost gdm[2989]: Failed to start X server several
> times in a short time period; disabling
> display :0
> Sep 12 17:50:53 localhost gpm[2606]: *** info [client.c(275)]:
> Sep 12 17:50:53 localhost gpm[2606]: Request on 2 (console 9)
> Sep 12 17:50:53 localhost gpm[2606]: *** info [client.c(284)]:
> Sep 12 17:50:53 localhost gpm[2606]: Closing
> <more shutdown messages cut>
> 
> I apologise for the length of the post, any help is appreciated.
> 
> Fede
> 

Your system is coming up, but X isn't.  So boot to runlevel 3 (a setting
near the top of the /etc/inittab file), log in, run "tail
-f /var/log/messages" so you can watch what's logged, and plug in the
USB receiver.  If no errors occur then start X manually ("startx").  If
X crashes you should land back at a console prompt (after all the errors
fly by!).

-- Mark C. Allman, PMP
-- Allman Professional Consulting,
Inc.
-- www.allmanpc.com, 617-947-4263

BusinessMsg -- the secure, managed, J2EE/AJAX Enterprise IM/IC solution.
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