Mouse not working

[Lordsyke]

There is no mouse on my R51 thinkpad with Debian installed. I tried moving the build in mouse pad and nothing displays. I tried plugining in a desktop mouse and it goes to a black screen and if I continue to press anything it makes me go back to the login screen and log in again. and this cycle repeats. How do I get the black screen not to display? I need my desktop mouse to work so I can Install the internet and mouse drivers.

[mm3100]

Maybe first try few easy things to see why your touchpad is not working, then find out why mouse is not. Maybe first one will be easier to deal with.
For start check for missing firmware and errors you might have. Try these commands

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dmesg | grep firmware
journalctl -b -p3

And post logs back here, either by picture, or with pastebinit.
https://packages.debian.org/buster/pastebinit

As for touchpad maybe you find something that helps here
https://www.maketecheasier.com/fix-touc ... ing-linux/
And maybe check if touchpad is even plugged in, if system detects then it is, have seen one post commenting about it here
https://www.linuxquestions.org/question ... 175524335/

[Lordsyke]

How do I get to that menu if my mouses completely don't work?

[mm3100]

You can get to console with just your keyboard and run from there. You should just be able to press win key (super key) and type name of a program. For example on KDE it is kterminal. But just write terminal and it should get you something you can do.

[Lordsyke]

MY r51 THINKPAD does not come with a win key. and both the ctrls with escape do not work.

[sgosnell]

Ctrl-Alt-F#, where # is a number between 1 and 6, (F1, F2, etc) will get you into a terminal. Ctrl-Alt-F7 should get you back to the desktop.

[Lordsyke]

Okay Kterminal and terminal do nothing and I did press enter.

[sgosnell]

"do nothing" is not very descriptive. You give no information about what you did and the result of doing that. We cannot see your screen nor read your mind. If you want help, you have to provide help and information.

[arochester]

If you read mm3100s link https://www.maketecheasier.com/fix-touc ... ing-linux/ above it refers to diffent drivers.

This post, translated from German, suggests the driver is evdev

xorg
The Xorg included in an etch has support for the graphics card. It took me a lot of time to find out how to activate the touchpad. Here are the steps:

Install the synaptic package : apt-get install synaptic
Load the evdev module (and enter it in the / etc / modules file , as this happens automatically at startup.
In the /etc/X11/xorg.conf the driver synaptics load.
Enter the further configuration in the file /etc/X11/xorg.conf . I did that according to the documentation for the synaptic package .
The Synaptic driver creates a kind of invisible scroll wheel on the right edge of the touchpad in the configuration. Just slide your finger up and down there.

Source - https://plastic-spoon.de/Debian-Etch-Li ... d-R51.html (OK its old, but so is the R51!)

[mm3100]

What DE are you using, since it is not finding kterminal or terminal, another one you could try it xterm that one is often installed as well.
Or as did sgosnell said switch to TTY and work from there. As it would already be terminal, then you could take picture use pastebinit or just try to install some of packages noted in those links.

[Lordsyke]

How do you load a module? Does it do it automatically or do you need it on a usb? and I don't know what version of Debian I'm running maybe it will tell me in the start up screen.

[mm3100]

Does it tell you that you are missing a module, such as kernel module? It should be loaded automatically if requested, unless it is missing. For that you need to install missing packages that contain it. Can you tall us what module is missing? With it we can find necessary package, then you would download it, place it on usb and install from tty or console, hopefully that should get your mouse working.

As for what version of debian you are running just run

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cat /etc/os-release

[Lordsyke]

I tried ctrl alt f2 and got the terminal. I put in the get-app install synaptic like you said and it did nothing went back to the main window. then when I pressed to do it again No terminal loaded. I turned it on then off and now ctrl alt f4 is broken. so the module should come with it then?

[mm3100]

It seems you are having too much trouble with this, maybe you should try unofficial non-free live version and install from there if everything is working.
Here is link to unofficial debian installation disks,
For 32 bit processor
https://cdimage.debian.org/images/unoff ... so-hybrid/

And for 64 bit
https://cdimage.debian.org/images/unoff ... so-hybrid/

I am unsure whether you have 32 or 64 bit, looking up specs for your device it seems there are few versions, but you should know. Just download version you want to do as usual, these isos already contain non-free packages in case that helps. I linked live versions so you can try them first, if it works on live version is should work after installing as well.

[sgosnell]

Perhaps try MX Linux. It's based on Debian, and mostly uses Debian repositories, but has drivers included for most hardware.

[Lordsyke]

So you're saying if I put say debian-live-10.7.0-i386-cinnamon+nonfree.iso on a usb stick I can install it over my current Debian and everything will just work without me needing additional drivers? And what does it mean that it's non free?

[sgosnell]

Non-free means the source code to the software is not freely available, it's proprietary. You should have firmware-misc-nonfree installed. If it isn't, install it. If you install debian-live-10.7.0-i386-cinnamon+nonfree.iso, it will remove what you have now. It might work.

[mm3100]

It is possible your mouse and touchpad and some other components are not working as they need proprietary firmware. That is mostly included in firmware-misc-nonfree. It was what we were trying to install in the first place, but since you are having too much trouble, better just reinstall whole os with iso that includes that in first place.

[Lordsyke]

So when you put the iso on the usb how do you get it to install onto your debian laptop again?

[sgosnell]

The .iso includes the installer. Boot from the .iso and run the installer. There are many, many tutorials available for doing this.