BOLVERK – Tim's Lousy Blog

First, this is finally what this website is about. Here I get to detail my ongoing struggles with the world of technology for my own records. If somebody else happens to find this useful all the better.

I just reinstalled Debian Sarge on my workstation. I had some things in mind that kind of necessitated a full reinstall including repartitioning my drives. I did a net install and then immediately upgraded to Etch. Prior to upgrading all was working well but afterwards X Windows would no longer come up. The error was a “preinit failed for input device” on the mouse.

The solution, when I finally found it, was to modprobe and then insert into /etc/modules psmouse and mousedev. This fixed the problem completely and as a perk I even have a functional mouse wheel on my Logitech mouse.

Now, I often don’t install X Windows on some of my Debian boxen but I’ve got a plan for this one. I’m going to start by installating VMWare Workstation and an XP machine on that. Once I’m comfortable I may move to VMWare Server (the free version of what used to be VMWare GSX server). That’s a whole nother story though.