Getting your USB mouse recognized

[dpeach]

I have an occasional USB mouse problem. I am running Kubuntu 9.10 (some kind of K adjective with a K animal name).*

Sometimes when I insert my wireless USB mouse dongle into the computer it seemingly is not recognized. The mouse does not respond. However, when I do a dmesg I see output that indicates that the mouse is indeed recognized and is given all the credentials to work. If I unplug it and plug it back in enough it will eventually work just fine. But this sometimes needs more than 30 tries. I got frustrated this morning and went in search of a solution.

It is as simple as issuing this command in a terminal:

Code:

sudo modprobe usbhid

If you are having problems with other USB devices you can modprobe the kernel module for the device and it should work. I don't know what those would be since I have not had issues with other devices and looked them up. You can probably easily find your module on Google and just use the 'sudo modprobe xxx' command.

*I hate the Ubuntu names. Ubuntu's numbering system is the best I have ever seen. You can know your version based on when it was released. With the animal names I know it is alphabetical, but you have to know what the last letter was that was used to know if you have the latest. I take any opportunity I can to say this in hopes that the Ubuntu community will stop using the names to the exclusion of the version numbers. It is terrible to go to a help site and find that I have to get a chart out to see which version of Ubuntu the site is referring to. If you would just use the numbers it would clear up all doubt.

[Ed]

David have you tried other usb mice to see if yours may be faulty?  Here is a link that may fix your problem.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/36339

[dpeach]

I don't think it is a faulty mouse since the mouse works in another computer (Windows) flawlessly. And when it does work, it works perfectly and never loses its connection. dmesg sees the mouse every time I plug-unplug-plug it in. It is just that the usbhid module is not loading right. But a sudo modprobe usbhid takes care of it.

However, I am curious to try this from that link you provided:

I currently use a workaround for this issue, which might be acceptable for the rest of you:

In "/etc/modprobe.d/blacklist" find:

# these drivers are very simple, the HID drivers are usually preferred
blacklist usbmouse
blacklist usbkbd

add

blacklist usbhid

and comment out the entries for usbmouse / usbkbd as needed. I.e.

# these drivers are very simple, the HID drivers are usually preferred
#blacklist usbmouse
blacklist usbkbd
blacklist usbhid

I am not at that machine to try it right now, but will let you know how it works for me.