Dell 8000 manual External Mice, Necessary kernel modules

3External 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!2) 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.

3.1Necessary 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.)

2As 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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