# mouse problem / no /dev/psm0 in /dev



## doughyi8u (Apr 1, 2010)

my computer was working fine for a while. one day the mouse started doing nothing at all. I discovered there was no /dev/psm0 and don't know how to add this. any idea?


----------



## graudeejs (Apr 1, 2010)

mouse died, you forgot to feed it


----------



## doughyi8u (Apr 1, 2010)

lol


----------



## graudeejs (Apr 1, 2010)

seriously, try it on other pc

another thing could cause this:
* you or your evil twin compilled custom FreeBSD kernel without mouse support

There might be other things, but 1st try to test the actual mouse if it works.

P.S.
Sorry for bad humour, I had few beers to much, now I don't feel any good


----------



## doughyi8u (Apr 1, 2010)

no worries. I'll check the mouse but this will make two that haven't worked. like I said the /dev/psm0 device file is missing. I looked at the mknod manpage but I don't know the details needed to create the device file (whether the file is block type device or character type devices). It says that mknod is deprecated on modern freebsd systems anyway.


----------



## graudeejs (Apr 1, 2010)

doughyi8u said:
			
		

> no worries. I'll check the mouse but this will make two that haven't worked. like I said the /dev/psm0 device file is missing. I looked at the mknod manpage but I don't know the details needed to create the device file (whether the file is block type device or character type devices). It says that mknod is deprecated on modern freebsd systems anyway.



you don't create device files.... this is not Linux.

any chance you have custom kernel?


----------



## doughyi8u (Apr 1, 2010)

yeah I tried plugging the mouse into the freebsd computer and it worked. thing is, I have a kvm I'm using and the mouse won't work the way it should when plugged into the kvm. it just scrolls all over without any control and on a terminal there's no mouse cursor at all. I do have a custom kernel. it worked before I added some NETGRAPH options for pppoed. I checked that too and the psm device was listed. I do have /dev/psm0 now however so I guess I'm getting closer.

Thanks for your help


----------



## SirDice (Apr 1, 2010)

Add to /etc/rc.conf:

```
moused_enable="YES"
```

Start moused: `# /etc/rc.d/moused start`


----------



## fronclynne (Apr 2, 2010)

Hmm, I don't recall ps/2 mouses being hot-pluggable.

I have, in the past, had fair amounts of trouble with budget KVMs.

I'll add that the last time I had to use mknod(1) was running FreeBSD 4.11: /dev entries are now dynamically created.  See devfs(8) & devd(8) (I think), so it makes me curious to know what version you're running.

Also, for quite a few weeks now there's a tendency to want to point at /dev/sysmouse rather than the raw mouse device, as per SirDice.


----------



## b7j0c (Jan 17, 2013)

graudeejs said:
			
		

> mouse died, you forgot to feed it



I know this thread has long since died, but I was burned by this exact problem. I also spent an hour trying to figure out why overnight, an external mouse was not functioning

Turns out at work I was given a "gaming" mouse that actually had batteries in it, and these batteries had died. Just one more thing to check for anyone who has to debug a similar issue.


----------

