# System failure after Udev install -- SOLVED

## hfday2001

I just loaded a box with a fresh install of 2004.2, kernel 2.6.8-r10, gnome 2.8, latest portage from Gentoo mirror, stage3 tarball, hotplug, famd, gdm, genkernel, latest xorg, blah, blah, it's getting easy. 

Mobo is nforce2, ATI 9200 agp card, CS4xxx sound, mouseman marble usb, 60 gig maxtor, pioneer 108a burner, and a dvd rom. Other than the base system, loggers, etc, I had only emerged Gnome/xscreensaver/gdm and no other apps yet and I booted right up and logged into the gnome and was reading, with epiphany, about udev and ide-cd. 

Everything worked great on first run, then, I decided to get rid of scsi-emu and devfs and move to ide-cd and udev.  I upped genkernel to the latest to support udev, emerged udev, followed decibels help and drakes rules, wrote a rule to symlink my dvd and dvdrw, recompiled my kernel to remove devfs at boot, the whole shebang, 2 or 3 hours worth of reading and going over configs, fstab, all configs are right... I have installed gentoo so many times I have learned to go over and over things because of my latent ability to develop acute dyslexia  :Wink: 

... Well, when I was satisfied with everything, I rebooted...

Hmmm, not one single error, everything passed with flying colors, saw udev doing its thing in the boot messages... console login was visible longer than usual before gdm presents its nice login screen... then, blink, blink, my screen develops this horribly distorted screen, everything crunched up to the top 1.5 inches of the monitor and system freezes like the best windows box I got.  Can't ssh to it, can ctrl - alt - bksp out of X, can't ctrl - alt - del... grrrr, hard reset.  Looks like rescue disc time, can anyone give me an idea where to start looking?Last edited by hfday2001 on Wed Oct 20, 2004 11:13 pm; edited 1 time in total

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## Decibels

First thing would be logs. Especially Xfree or Xorg logs, which ever you used.

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## hfday2001

Well, I booted from the Gentoo CD and looked over my logs and it my be a problem with how my xorg.conf is identifiying my mouse.  The log shows several errors.

*snip*

(EE) xf86OpenSerial: Cannot open device /dev/mouse

                            No Such Device

*snip*

(EE) mouse0: cannot open input device

*snip*

(EE) Preinit Failed for input device "Mouse0"

*snip*

(WW) No Core Pointer Registered

and at the beginning of the log an error I have never seen....

(EE) Radeon(0): shmget(lowmem) error: Unkown error 999

The mouse and agp card were working fine before udev with the mouse as 

/dev/mouse conf'd with xorgcfg...  All the USB stuff is compiled into the kernel ...

GDM log only reported that X crashed...

Should I rename my mouse say, /dev/mouse0 or /dev/input/mouse0, I remember under 2.4 with devfs and xfree it was listed under

/dev/input/mice...

I'll do some more reading...

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## hfday2001

I figured out my problem. I hope it can help someone else.

I looked at the udev rules file and noticed that the mouse names were mice, mouse0, etc 

preceded by 'input'.  When I first installed, xorgcfg set my mouse up as /dev/mouse -- sooo...

I changed the name of my mouse in xorg.conf from /dev/mouse to /dev/input/mouse0 and

voila...!  Booted right up!  Can't believe that mouse line locked up my whole system.

Thanks decibel and drake for the great docs!

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## Decibels

Glad you figured it out, cudo's.  I think you probably just missed something in the docs by mistake! It was there in Problem Devices in Udev Primer:

```
Mice, Meese and Mouses: For those of you that find your mouse doesn't work in udev. It really is not a udev problem, it is how you have configured it in the past. Udev (at this time) has 4 device locations you can use for mice.

/dev/input/mice

/dev/input/mouse0 (there will be mouse1, mouse2,.. if you have more, but mouse0 is for 1st mouse)

/dev/misc/psaux (which has symlink /dev/psaux)

So whichever you are using (ie. mouse#, mice or psaux), just make sure your /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 or XF86Config has the correct location for the device. You could make your own symlink in /etc/udev/rules.d/10-local.rules, but better off editing the XF86Config-4 or XF86Config file.
```

Maybe I should add Xorg.conf now also.

Or maybe I didn't write it clear enough. I am surprised though that Xorg didn't say a little more when it crapped out. I put a new system (for recovery) on another partition with udev on it. Had a few screwup's/omissions in Xorg.conf myself (first time using it) and it spit out the exact problem. Seemed better than Xfree at pointing out my error.

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## guppy

 *hfday2001 wrote:*   

> I figured out my problem. I hope it can help someone else.
> 
> I looked at the udev rules file and noticed that the mouse names were mice, mouse0, etc 
> 
> preceded by 'input'.  When I first installed, xorgcfg set my mouse up as /dev/mouse -- sooo...
> ...

 

Actualy that error shouldn't lock your system - after 5 or so tries gdm should give you a textmode dialog box that says "X keeps crashing" - just answer no, ok ( or ignore it and press alt+f2 ) then you are droped in a console and can fix xorg.conf ( or XF86config ) ...

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## hfday2001

 *Decibels wrote:*   

> Glad you figured it out, cudo's.  I think you probably just missed something in the docs by mistake! It was there in Problem Devices in Udev Primer:

 

You are right! I started reading the problem devices section and read about nvidia, then sound...then I thought, "I haven't had any hardware issues with gentoo since 1.4..." and stopped reading, eager to jump right in.  I went back and read the rest of the UdevPrimer after I spent a good 45 minutes figuring out what was wrong. Then I read the "Mice, Meese and Mouses" section and smacked myself in the forehead. I am not a newbie. but I am still new to a lot of Linux stuff, and I do have to say, I Love Gentoo, it is the 'most fun' I have had with computers since I started out with win95 back in 1997.  I like Debian, I install SuSE for people I try to convert, but if you really like hacking, playing and customizing, Gentoo is it.  Thanks again Decibels for your contribution and all the other devs and pros making this thing successful!

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