Here is the translated text:

+++ title = “Dead Mouse on Ubuntu” slug = “2008-12-26-dead-mouse-on-ubuntu” published = 2008-12-26T06:00:00.001000-04:00 author = “Nilo Menezes” tags = [ “tips”, “ubuntu”, “linux”] +++

This is just to register and save it in Google :-)

When I installed Linux on my home machine, the first problem I had was that the mouse would stop working from time to time. Although the rest of the computer continued to work, X froze. After a lot of browsing and research, I discovered that it was a problem with the Nvidia 4 chipset, which my motherboard uses. Although plausible, this problem does not cause any problems in Windows XP. This led me to the shameful task of explaining to the children why Linux freezes. My middle daughter asked why we used Linux, since Windows XP did not freeze!

With Ubuntu 8.10, I renewed my hopes, but the bug is still there. The problem freezes the mouse and then the keyboard, if it is connected via USB. I bought a PS/2 keyboard (argh!) and tried to buy a PS/2 mouse as well, but for the other micro :-). I discovered that the adapter did not work and ended up using it as USB anyway. Then I used magic:

Script: ressuscita-mouse.sh

#!/bin/sh

modprobe -r usbhci

modprobe usbhci

Using xbindkeys and xbindkeys-conf (both can be installed using apt-get), I configured ALT+M to run the script above. Since it needs root privileges to execute modprobe, I created a shortcut using gksudo ressuscita-mouse.sh

It works well if you still have a keyboard. Since I connected my keyboard to the PS/2 port, it is no longer affected by the problem. If your keyboard is USB, the solution is to do an ssh connection to the machine and execute the script manually.

Of course, I reported this bug a long time ago, but I think people don’t care much about it, or it’s really hard to solve: Link to the bug. Anyway, here is the registration of this work-around.