A couple of months ago, I noticed wmfs weren't playing any more in Linux. I don't typically watch much video on the computer -- just what people here link, mostly -- so I had no idea how long it had been broken. I assumed it was either a player or a codec had gotten borked in a recent Debian upgrade. No biggie, I'm on Unstable, shit happens.

So I go poking around, upgrading this, downgrading that. Finally decide that it's time to switch from XFree86 to xorg. Not so much a "finally I'm ready" moment as a "what've I got to lose?" moment.

Blecch. That sucked.

I eventually got it so monumentally screwed up that I couldn't even get X to launch any more. I gave up and booted to Windows. (Duel[1] boot is keen!) Went looking around for tips on fixing X. While I've got a browser window open I figure, "Hey, I might as well check out that video." Imagine my chagrin when I find that video doesn't play in Windows, either.

"Hmm, I'm not A+ Certified™ or nothin', but this seems like it just might not be an X issue," I think to myself. So, knowing that it's most likely a dying video card, I try to at least get X working again while it still does static content okay. This is the part where, if you've ever seen a Hollywood movie where the director used strings in the score to make absolutely sure you don't miss the foreshadowing, you'll be thinking, "What a dumbass."

Somewhere in the midst of installing, removing, upgrading downgrading, sidegrading, and constant rebooting, it stopped even making it through the POST. "Well shit," says me, "I'll pull the video card from my old box and put it in here." And it doesn't make it through the POST. And the power supply fan doesn't spin up. [sigh]

So I finally get around to ordering a new PS. (Note to self: June and July is a good time to not spend your nights in front of a monitor. Remember this next summer.) Pop it in and ... POST! Then X hangs. Reboot to Windows and ... video!

Okay, so either the video card took down the power supply, or vice versa. Either way, I now have functioning components. I'm like all "Woot!" and stuff.

But X still doesn't work. And researching in lynx while I'm trying to fix it suuuUUUCCCKKKKS! Okay, VMWare to the rescue. Boot to Windows, launch VMWare. Google in Windows, switch to Linux to try new stuff. Decide -- because nothing else has worked, so why not? -- to change my sources.list to point to Ubuntu. Everyone says it works so great. Some time later (I could count the time-stamped backups of xorg.conf if I really cared) I notice that it's the FUCKING MOUSE it's not seeing. WTF?! When/why did that stop working?

So I track down a tip for starting X without a mouse. It's normally used for headless installations, but mine's just all bustificated. Reconfigure and X launches, yay! (No mouse, of course.) Thinking I don't nee to be in VMWare any more, reboot to Linux and ... feel free to start shaking your head here, because I know you see it coming ... X won't start. Oh yeah [smacks head] I forgot the "no mouse" parameter I added to startx. Hmm, no place to do that with GDM. No problemo, I'll fix that later.

So I'm happily in X, having used startx instead of gdm. Looking for tips on finding what port the damn mouse is on. I try everything in /dev/input, /dev/mouse, /dev/psaux ... all the places everyone says to look. Even tried ttys0 and ttys1. (Yeah, I researched. I didn't know that.)

At one point, instead of another round of sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg I just sudo vim /etc/X11/xorg.conf and start trying different mouse ports. Suddenly I notice two things. 1) I'm not using the "no mouse" command line option to startx, but it's working anyway. And 2) xorg.conf is showing VMWare as the video driver. Thinking how odd that is, I change it back to tdfx, restart X, and it still works. And since I don't need the "no mouse" parameter, I try gdm again. Nope, no device found. (But it doesn't say pointer device or video device. This comes up again later.)

So I play around with video devices for a while. Try pointer settings. No matter what I do, the mouse can't be found. But then I notice that changing the available resolutions in xorg.conf didn't seem to do anything, either.

So I do the dpkg-reconfigure dance again and ... fucking X won't start again.


===


So here's the question I know I need an answer for: How the hell do I find what port the mouse is on? It works in Windows. I've tried both PS/2 and USB mice. Windows sees them both, X gets nothing. Even when usbview shows the USB mouse attached, mdetect doesn't find that or the PS/2. (Although it does point to ttyS0 & ttyS1.)

What did I break, and how do I un-break it?






[1] Yes, I know. It's intentional.

[link|http://www.linux-usb.org/FAQ.html#gs4|http://www.linux-usb.org/FAQ.html#gs4]

I'd like to flatten just the Linux partition and leave the XP stuff there, since I don't have install media for it. If I can get both OSs reading/writing the same partition again (I got the filesharing working through VMWare at one point) I'll just move /home to an XP directory.

Any particular tips/gotchas I should keep in mind so I don't bork the XP install?

I just need a shared place to put its contents while I rebuid the Linux install.

I'll use those, then just update/upgrade. Probably be less than dl-ing the whole .iso.

The security restrictions here are ... well, we put the "strict" in "restrictions". I'll call the library, see what they say.