Mouse don't move, everything else is ok, Lubuntu related

[Littlebigone]

Hi Tomas and all,

I have installed Lubuntu 18.04 LTS, no change, and i am trying to build a new distribution that will run on an usb pendrive. No virtual machine involved. I have tried Linux Live Kit v2.6, and also the previous releases, but I always get the same problem.

I am running a DELL Lattitude e7240 core_i5 32 Go RAM with a Logitech G3 mouse, everything seems really generic and have no problem with originals ubuntu/mint distributions.

The Linux Live Kit is configured as explained in documentations and the whole build went fine. The usb pendrive was formatted FAT32, and Linux Live Kit was installed fine. I also made some tests on ext3 and ext4 formatted usb pendrives with the same results.

The usb pendrive boots ok and the Lubuntu system runs fine until login prompt. Everything works except the mouse. The mouse pointer displays on screen but doesn't move at all. I can login and open a terminal. Everything seems ok and lsmod reports a usbmouse is loaded on.

I also made some tests on others Lubuntu and Xubuntu releases numbers with the same results, so it seems to affect many distributions.

I also made some tests on others computers with the same results and this issue doesn't seems to be specifically related to my hardware.

I am a long time user of your projects and I have much respect for your work, so I decided to finally get in touch with you to report this problem. Though this 'mouse problem' could be related to the previous 'mouse problems' related here in Github, it doesn't seems to react the same way with other distributions, and only happen with ubuntu related distributions. I have read here in Github all others issues and could not find anything that would fix this issue.

Please, give it a try as it is pretty easy to reproduce the bug. Anyone can watch the issue, doing a Lubuntu install on an usb drive with nothing special, install Linux Live Kit v2.6, unzip the zip archive to another usb drive, and reboot. Please report here how it went so we can compare if needed.

If you know of a solution, or if you want me to add more details please tell me exactly what to do or type in a terminal with 'copy and paste' commands, as I may not be as much competent as you are.

Best regards, Laurent CAS

[Tomas-M]

Can you please make a live ISO and upload it somewhere, then post a download link here so I could try?

[Littlebigone]

Thanks Tomas, here are the links for a test release valid for 7 days :

iso file https://we.tl/t-EppTFxnLkE zip file https://we.tl/t-0ZD6VZF1nr

[Tomas-M]

Unfortunately your iso does not boot in virtualbox, I didn't investigate why

[tree-t]

@Littlebigone Can you try:

sudo apt reinstall xserver-xorg-input-all

Note: You will have to connect to the internet. If the above command returns an error then will it be possible for you to send a screenshot or a picture of it? ~Tree-T

[hello-smile6]

@Littlebigone Works perfectly when booted in qemu if the initrd and kernel are set using command-line parameters.

[tree-t]

Hey @Tomas-M, IDK why, but when I boot the iso provided by @Littlebigone, I get this(in qemu): Do you know why this is happening? Note: I used:

qemu-system-x86_64 -m 2G -cdrom mozillux-test.iso --vnc :1

For booting it in qemu. Thank you in advance :) ~Tree-t

[hello-smile6]

Hey @Tomas-M, IDK why, but when I boot the iso provided by @Littlebigone, I get this(in qemu): Do you know why this is happening? Note: I used:

qemu-system-x86_64 -m 2G -cdrom mozillux-test.iso --vnc :1

For booting it in qemu. Thank you in advance :) ~Tree-t

Copy the kernel and initrd from /mozillux/boot/ to the directory the ISO is in. Then, boot it using:

qemu-system-x86_64 -m 2G -cdrom mozillux-test.iso -kernel vmlinuz -initrd initrfs.img -append "vga=769 load_ramdisk=1 prompt_ramdisk=0 rw printk.time=0 apparmor=0 perch" --vnc :1

There's some kind of issue with their ISO. That'll give you the default boot configuration but bypass their bootloader.

[hello-smile6]

@tree-t

[tree-t]

Hey @Tomas-M, IDK why, but when I boot the iso provided by @Littlebigone, I get this(in qemu): Do you know why this is happening? Note: I used:

qemu-system-x86_64 -m 2G -cdrom mozillux-test.iso --vnc :1

For booting it in qemu. Thank you in advance :) ~Tree-t

Copy the kernel and initrd from /mozillux/boot/ to the directory the ISO is in. Then, boot it using:

qemu-system-x86_64 -m 2G -cdrom mozillux-test.iso -kernel vmlinuz -initrd initrfs.img -append "vga=769 load_ramdisk=1 prompt_ramdisk=0 rw printk.time=0 apparmor=0 perch" --vnc :1

There's some kind of issue with their ISO. That'll give you the default boot configuration but bypass their bootloader.

Thank you @hello-smile6 :) ~Tree-t

[Littlebigone]

Thanks everyone

@hello-smile6 please can you detail what you did to make the ZIP archive work ?

We don't use the ISO file and we gave up on using ISOs because of other constraints at our work. I could not make the mouse to work so I have decided to start all over from scratch instead of relying on Lubuntu. Here is the story:

First, the aufs-tools apt package is not available at time of writting for ubuntu 22.04 LTS so I tried to compile kernel with the script in tools directory. After changes of appropriate references, the script ran but failed when applying some patches. I did some more researches but couldn't get a clean compilation for the kernel whatever I tried.

The only option was to get back to ubuntu 20.04 LTS server edition and use aufs-tools package provided in the repositories. I used it to build a barebone with only console tools and everything seems to work fine, except we can't test the mouse problem.

Inside the backbone, I used linux live kit to produce a test distribution and all went fine. Then I boot into the distribution and installed KDE desktop in minimal mode with --no-install-recommends switch set.

It works and everything is looking good except the mouse is still not moving.

Though this is still 'work in progress' I uploaded it to sourceforge as a release candidate so we can ask more people for help. Here is the link https://sourceforge.net/projects/mozillux/files/

So far, we're stuck here. Any help welcome and much appreciated.

Best regards, Laurent CAS

[Littlebigone]

@tree-t Thanks, I have tried to reinstall xserver-xorg-input-all as you said and there was no error, reboot went fine but the mouse still don't move. Note the trackpad seems to be ok though, but the usb mouse doesn't react...

[hello-smile6]

Thanks everyone

@hello-smile6 please can you detail what you did to make the ZIP archive work ?

We don't use the ISO file and we gave up on using ISOs because of other constraints at our work. I could not make the mouse to work so I have decided to start all over from scratch instead of relying on Lubuntu. Here is the story:

First, the aufs-tools apt package is not available at time of writting for ubuntu 22.04 LTS so I tried to compile kernel with the script in tools directory. After changes of appropriate references, the script ran but failed when applying some patches. I did some more researches but couldn't get a clean compilation for the kernel whatever I tried.

The only option was to get back to ubuntu 20.04 LTS server edition and use aufs-tools package provided in the repositories. I used it to build a barebone with only console tools and everything seems to work fine, except we can't test the mouse problem.

Inside the backbone, I used linux live kit to produce a test distribution and all went fine. Then I boot into the distribution and installed KDE desktop in minimal mode with --no-install-recommends switch set.

It works and everything is looking good except the mouse is still not moving.

Though this is still 'work in progress' I uploaded it to sourceforge as a release candidate so we can ask more people for help. Here is the link https://sourceforge.net/projects/mozillux/files/

So far, we're stuck here. Any help welcome and much appreciated.

Best regards, Laurent CAS

First, I copied the kernel and initrd into the directory with the disk image. (I used the .iso because it was the only thing that'd work). Then, I started qemu with the kernel and initrd parameters.

[tree-t]

@tree-t Thanks, I have tried to reinstall xserver-xorg-input-all as you said and there was no error, reboot went fine but the mouse still don't move. Note the trackpad seems to be ok though, but the usb mouse doesn't react...

Welcome @Littlebigone , But the script won't come into effect if the changes are not saved(Just in case you didn't save the changes). :) ~Tree-t

[Littlebigone]

@tree-t yes I was in 'persistant changes' mode but there was no change to the mouse problem, then I re-booted and there was no change too.

@hello-smile6 we didn't detect anything with the ISO because we didn't use it as we rely only on the .zip archive. And we may have missed something on the ISO setup but it should not have any impact on the zipped linux.

[hello-smile6]

@tree-t yes I was in 'persistant changes' mode but there was no change to the mouse problem, then I re-booted and there was no change too.

@hello-smile6 we didn't detect anything with the ISO because we didn't use it as we rely only on the .zip archive. And we may have missed something on the ISO setup but it should not have any impact on the zipped linux.

You missed a file needed to boot. (I got the .iso to boot, but it never started a desktop environment, and I couldn't guess the username)

[Littlebigone]

@hello-smile6 I would not recommend using the ISO file as we didn't worked on it but it would be great to have a trick to run the zip file inside qemu. I may not know qemu enough but if you or someone know how to, please kindly explain :-) Before I forget, we have set username = password as usual and user is mozillux ;-)

[Littlebigone]

I have ran some more tests from inside the target distribution made with linux-live-kit:

1. inxi -v7 usb report everything is ok, usb mouse is correctly identified, and KinfoCenter is ok too.
2. have tried a complete kde with apt install kde-standard ... just in case I would have forgot something: usb mouse is there but no move.
3. have tried to copy the full original /lib/modules/$kernel into the new /lib/modules/kernel on the pendrive and reboot. But it made no change for the mouse problem.

I'm surprised that inxi and kinfoCenter report everything ok and it does not work...

[Littlebigone]

@hello-smile6 I've tried as explained and replaced in the pendrive files vmlinuz and initrfs.img with their originals coming from the ubuntu installed vmlinuz and initrd ; I also had to add 'root=UUID=...' in the APPEND line in syslinux.cfg. Well, it boots fine but it did not solve the mouse problem. What worries me is that this problem seems to affect all ubuntu distributions tested so far.

[Littlebigone]

Hi, I have discovered something. I noticed some changes in the ubuntu installer and I decided to start all over again from scratch once again.

1. I did an install with ubuntu server v20.04 and from there I ran linux live kit. My hope was to build a barebone, in text mode. When tested, the linux live kit was all good and I installed KDE but after install the usb mouse didn't move.

2. I did another install with ubuntu server v20.04 and I installed KDE, then I ran the linux live kit. When tested, the linux live kit was all good and the usb mouse was OK, move fine. So we have a start of solution.

Maybe someone knows how to make a linux live kit for servers ? so we could build barebones :-)

[Tomas-M]

Basically, linux live kit does not differentiate between different distributions or installed packages. It only adds a layer to the distribution you installed, to make it run from a readonly media. I tested your ISO (after fixing it) and I couldn't find password for root, so I gave up trying.

There are two possible causes of mouse not working - either missing kernel drivers for your mouse (unlikely) or missing input device drivers in xorg (unlikely) so I am really not sure what may be the problem.

[hello-smile6]

Basically, linux live kit does not differentiate between different distributions or installed packages. It only adds a layer to the distribution you installed, to make it run from a readonly media. I tested your ISO (after fixing it) and I couldn't find password for root, so I gave up trying.

There are two possible causes of mouse not working - either missing kernel drivers for your mouse (unlikely) or missing input device drivers in xorg (unlikely) so I am really not sure what may be the problem.

Is libinput installed?

[Tomas-M]

If everything works when the distro is installed (before using linux live scripts), then I do not see why it should not work in live mode.

[Littlebigone]

@Tomas-M

Basically, linux live kit does not differentiate between different distributions or installed packages. It only adds a layer to the distribution you installed, to make it run from a readonly media. I tested your ISO (after fixing it) and I couldn't find password for root, so I gave up trying.

password is mozillux

If everything works when the distro is installed (before using linux live scripts), then I do not see why it should not work in live mode.

I did something very simple, from scratch to demonstrate: install ubuntu server 20.04 apt install aufs-tools gnome-session gdm3 reboot everything works, mouse is ok plug in pendrive mkfs.vfat /dev/sdb1 config linux live kit 2.6 and build install the build in a pendrive with unzip then bootinst.sh reboot on pendrive everything works except the usb mouse.

[tree-t]

@Tomas-M

Basically, linux live kit does not differentiate between different distributions or installed packages. It only adds a layer to the distribution you installed, to make it run from a readonly media. I tested your ISO (after fixing it) and I couldn't find password for root, so I gave up trying.

password is mozillux

If everything works when the distro is installed (before using linux live scripts), then I do not see why it should not work in live mode.

I did something very simple, from scratch to demonstrate: install ubuntu server 20.04 apt install aufs-tools gnome-session gdm3 reboot everything works, mouse is ok plug in pendrive mkfs.vfat /dev/sdb1 config linux live kit 2.6 and build install the build in a pendrive with unzip then bootinst.sh reboot on pendrive everything works except the usb mouse.

@Littlebigone , Why don't you do what you did earlier i.e.

apt install aufs-tools gnome-session gdm3 

And make a module of /run/initramfs/changes Note: delete/disable the changes done by running the apt install aufs-tools gnome-session gdm3 command earlier (at the time, when you wrote the comment ~Tree-t

[lentas1]

link is expired

[Littlebigone]

Hi, I have made some builds ubuntu 20.04 LTS with Linux live kit and overlayfs instead of aufs. Everything works and the mouse too works fine with overlayfs, but it is much slower than with aufs. The problem seems to be in aufs. I learned that docker uses overlay2, which by their word is much better but I could not find how to install overlay2. Does anyone have an install recipe for overlay2 ?

@tree-t This raises other problems, such as re-install the whole graphics from inside the live kit, which have a limited space in the pendrive. I would prefer to solve the mouse problem so users have all available space.

@lentas1 Though this is still 'work in progress' I uploaded it to sourceforge as a release candidate so we can ask more people for help. Here is the link https://sourceforge.net/projects/mozillux/files/

[Tomas-M]

If (and only if) this was an aufs issue, you could be able to find some hints in dmesg output, maybe

[Littlebigone]

Hi everyone :-) It's ok, I got it with another kernel. They have a driver issue. Thanks again.