Mouse Trouble

I just breathed some new life into an old IBM Thinkpad r31 by replacing a sliggish windows xp install with Debian (Etch) and the XFCE4 desktop environment. It went from a ten minute boot time, to around 75 seconds.

Everything worked great on the first try except the mouse nubbin in the middle of the keyboard. It will occassionally move erratically around the screen and will fire of both left and right clicks on its own. After a second or two of this, it seems to settle down. Any thoughts?

By the way, here are the contents of /etc/X11/xorg.conf

# /etc/X11/xorg.conf (xorg X Window System server configuration file)
#
# This file was generated by dexconf, the Debian X Configuration tool, using
# values from the debconf database.
#
# Edit this file with caution, and see the /etc/X11/xorg.conf manual page.
# (Type "man /etc/X11/xorg.conf" at the shell prompt.)
#
# This file is automatically updated on xserver-xorg package upgrades *only*
# if it has not been modified since the last upgrade of the xserver-xorg
# package.
#
# If you have edited this file but would like it to be automatically updated
# again, run the following command:
#   sudo dpkg-reconfigure -phigh xserver-xorg

Section "Files" 
    FontPath    "/usr/share/fonts/X11/misc" 
    FontPath    "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc" 
    FontPath    "/usr/share/fonts/X11/cyrillic" 
    FontPath    "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/cyrillic" 
    FontPath    "/usr/share/fonts/X11/100dpi/:unscaled" 
    FontPath    "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi/:unscaled" 
    FontPath    "/usr/share/fonts/X11/75dpi/:unscaled" 
    FontPath    "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi/:unscaled" 
    FontPath    "/usr/share/fonts/X11/Type1" 
    FontPath    "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1" 
    FontPath    "/usr/share/fonts/X11/100dpi" 
    FontPath    "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi" 
    FontPath    "/usr/share/fonts/X11/75dpi" 
    FontPath    "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi" 
    # path to defoma fonts
    FontPath    "/var/lib/defoma/x-ttcidfont-conf.d/dirs/TrueType" 
EndSection

Section "Module" 
    Load    "i2c" 
    Load    "bitmap" 
    Load    "ddc" 
    Load    "dri" 
    Load    "extmod" 
    Load    "freetype" 
    Load    "glx" 
    Load    "int10" 
    Load    "vbe" 
EndSection

Section "InputDevice" 
    Identifier    "Generic Keyboard" 
    Driver        "kbd" 
    Option        "CoreKeyboard" 
    Option        "XkbRules"    "xorg" 
    Option        "XkbModel"    "pc104" 
    Option        "XkbLayout"    "us" 
EndSection

Section "InputDevice" 
    Identifier    "Configured Mouse" 
    Driver        "mouse" 
    Option        "CorePointer" 
    Option        "Device"        "/dev/input/mice" 
    Option        "Protocol"        "ImPS/2" 
    Option        "Emulate3Buttons"    "true" 
EndSection

#Section "InputDevice" 
#    Identifier    "Synaptics Touchpad" 
#    Driver        "synaptics" 
#    Option        "SendCoreEvents"    "true" 
#    Option        "Device"        "/dev/psaux" 
#    Option        "Protocol"        "auto-dev" 
#    Option        "HorizScrollDelta"    "0" 
#EndSection

Section "Device" 
    Identifier    "Intel Corporation 82830 CGC [Chipset Graphics Controller]" 
    Driver        "i810" 
    BusID        "PCI:0:2:0" 
EndSection

Section "Monitor" 
    Identifier    "Generic Monitor" 
    Option        "DPMS" 
EndSection

Section "Screen" 
    Identifier    "Default Screen" 
    Device        "Intel Corporation 82830 CGC [Chipset Graphics Controller]" 
    Monitor        "Generic Monitor" 
    DefaultDepth    24
    SubSection "Display" 
        Depth        1
        Modes        "1024x768" 
    EndSubSection
    SubSection "Display" 
        Depth        4
        Modes        "1024x768" 
    EndSubSection
    SubSection "Display" 
        Depth        8
        Modes        "1024x768" 
    EndSubSection
    SubSection "Display" 
        Depth        15
        Modes        "1024x768" 
    EndSubSection
    SubSection "Display" 
        Depth        16
        Modes        "1024x768" 
    EndSubSection
    SubSection "Display" 
        Depth        24
        Modes        "1024x768" 
    EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "ServerLayout" 
    Identifier    "Default Layout" 
    Screen        "Default Screen" 
    InputDevice    "Generic Keyboard" 
    InputDevice    "Configured Mouse" 
#    InputDevice    "Synaptics Touchpad" commented out to fix cursor jumping
EndSection

Section "DRI" 
    Mode    0666
EndSection

Whoops, that formatting did not work out so well.

In any case, you get the idea. Any and all help is appreciated.

Thanks for reading.

Does it do the same thing with an external mouse plugged in and the internal option disabled? I had weird issues with my trackpad and finally just disabled it going for external mouse. Works great now but that might not be an optimal solution for you. If you test it though you might be able to rule out hardware vs configuration anyway?

btw, I fixed the format of your code posting. You just need to wrap code with preformat tags (<pre> and </pre>) to get it to show up right. I’ll see if there’s a markup shortcut that can be applied to the forum’s text editor.

It’s been a while since I’ve had to dig around in X conf files. I’ll take a look and see if I can spot anything as well.

I will try an external mouse, although that’s not a great long-term solution for me. in X conf I could also comment out the “Configured Mouse” option and try to use only the “Synaptics Touchpad” pointer config. I’m really not sure why I didn’t try that before. Thanks for the input.