ok, here it goes. i wrote it assuming you were a complete newbie, but you'd probably know a little of it if you're an mcsa and have used dos. it's ugly and not formatted too well, because it was written on the fly:
the first thing you want to is to kill the x console, with the key combination Control-Alt-Backspace. you should be brought to the console. i don't know if you're logged in or not already, but do that. use root (which you probably set up during install).
if that key combo doesn't work, let me know and i'll tell you how to reboot to runlevel 3. (runlevel 3 is console login, runlevel 5 is graphical login).
you will be at your home directory, /root. now, you want to get the synaptics driver. at the command line, it's probably easiest to use wget to get it. so, you would type something like this:
'wget
http://w1.894.telia.com/~u89404340/t...11.3p6.tar.bz2'
(all commands will be in single quotes, but don't include the quotes when you do the command. the forums seem to be truncating the urls, so just highlight them and look in the status bar at the bottom to see the whole url. write it down or something)
that's the driver i recommend, which fixes the double-click bug, supports my scroll button, etc. if you wanted to, you could use the old tuxmobil driver, by doing:
'wget
http://tuxmobil.org/software/synapti...-0.11.3.tar.gz'
but that one is not really as good, and has bugs.
now, you need to extract the file. you want to use the 'tar' command.
here are the flags that you will need to use:
-x (for extract)
-v (for verbose - lists the files as it extracts them)
-f (for file - specifies the target file)
-z (for gzip - extracts gzipped tars, with the 'tar.gz' or 'tgz' extension)
-j (for bzip2 - extracts bzipped files, with the 'tar.bz2' or 'tbz2' extension.
you will only use _either_ 'z' or 'j' depending on which of the files you use. you can combine all the flags into one large flag - however, the -f flag _has_ to be last, because it means the parameter immediately following is the filename. so if you downloaded synaptics-0.11.3p6.tar.bz2, you would type
'tar -jxvf synaptics-0.11.3p6.tar.bz2'
and if you downloaded synaptics-0.11.3.tar.gz, you would type
'tar -zxvf synaptics-0.11.3.tar.gz'
either way, you will end up with a directory called 'synaptics.' so change to that directory with
'cd synaptics'
and type 'ls' to list the files in that directory. one of those is called 'synaptics_drv.o' and that's the file you want. (i'm having you use the precompiled driver, as opposed to compiling your own, because it gets to be a pain to edit the makefiles and stuff)
now, check your X input driver directory, which should be '/usr/X11R6/lib/modules/input', with just a
'ls /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/input' - you don't have to change to the directory. (note - linux is case sensitive while windows is not - pay attention to the letter cases. so make sure that X11R6 is capitalized)
you should see a list of files that look similar to your synaptics_drv.o driver - mouse_drv.o, kbd_drv.o, and a bunch of others.
if not, then you're going to have to find that directory. so, we can do a search for that mouse_drv.o file, and the rest of them should be in that directory, too. so, do something like
'find / -name 'mouse_drv.o''
to search from the root. note - those are two single quotes at the end, one for the whole command and one for the filename. so it would really look like
find / -name 'mouse_drv.o'
on your command line.
find searches recursively, but not parent directories. you could just search usr with
'find /usr -name 'mouse_drv.o''
to save time since it's likely to be in the /usr directory, but i usually just do it from root to be more thorough. distributions do things in weird ways sometimes...
when you find that directory, just substitute that path in place of /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/input for the commands.
now, you want to copy your synaptics driver to that modules directory. so do:
'cp synaptics_drv.o /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/input' - this will work if you're still in that 'synaptics' directory, which you should be. if not, just substitute the full path of the synaptics driver, '/root/synaptics/synaptics_drv.o' or whatever it is, in place of synaptics_drv.o.
if everything goes correctly, you will see the prompt again with no error messages. you can list the contents of /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/input again, to check and see if your synaptics_drv.o is there. if it is, then you're halfway there.
now, the next step is to edit your X configuration file. this is where it gets a little tricky - distros sometimes put the file in different places. i'll just give you the default, though, and you can let me know if it doesn't work.
the default dir for the configs is '/etc/X11'. so go there with
'cd /etc/X11' and list with 'ls'.
you should see a bunch of files. if there is too much stuff, and you need to scroll back up, you can hold shift and use pageup and pagedown to scroll the screen up and down. the config file you are looking for is 'XF86Config' or 'XF86Config-4'. so, if you want to list just these files, you could do:
'ls XF86Config*' to list any files that match that prefix.
you should see one or the other, i don't know which one. if there are both, edit XF86Config-4. i'll have you use the 'vi' editor, since it's the most common one, but unfortunately, it's a little difficult to grasp - i'll try and explain it, though:
first, open the file. so do
'vi XF86Config-4' or 'vi XF86Config', whichever is appropriate. you should see a bunch of text in your window. now, about vi:
vi has two modes, an edit mode and a command mode. the default is command mode, so that's where you should be. you can scroll up and down with the arrow keys or the pageup/down keys, but you won't be able to make changes. to enter edit mode, just press 'i'. you should see something like "--INSERT--" at the bottom - that means you're in edit mode. you can scroll like in command mode, and you can edit by just typing, backspace, enter for a new line, etc. if you press escape, you will go back to command mode. that's the gist of it.
now, as to the changes you want:
scroll through the file. there is a particular section you are looking for. it's called 'Section "InputDevice"'. note that there are multiple inputdevice sections - below that, there should be a 'Driver' line, with either 'keyboard' or 'mouse'. obviously, find the mouse one. it may even be labeled with comments (comment lines start with '#'.)
so find your mouse inputdevice section. comment out any existing mouse section lines by putting #'s in front of them - it's easier to start from scratch. note - you need to make sure _all_ lines between and including the 'Section "InputDevice"' and 'EndSection' lines are commented. so comment out any mouse sections. (unless you have another mouse that you want to use in combination with the touchpad - if so, leave that section uncommented)
now, you are going to add your own inputdevice section. there are a bunch of options that you can do, so i'll just give my section as an example:
Section "InputDevice"
Identifier"touchpad"
Driver "synaptics"
Option "Device""/dev/psaux"
Option "Edges""1900 5400 1800 3900"
Option "Finger""25 30"
Option "MaxTapTime""20"
Option "MaxTapMove""220"
Option "VertScrollDelta""100"
Option "MinSpeed""0.02"
Option "MaxSpeed""0.18"
Option "AccelFactor""0.0010"
Option "ZAxisMapping""4 5"
Option "Resolution""1200"
EndSection
case sensitive, of course. all the lines except for the top 'Section' and bottom 'EndSection' line should be indented with five spaces - sagerforums seems to like to remove extra whitespace. now, as to what this all is:
firstly, note what you use for identifier. it will be necessary later. the driver line specifies the synaptics driver you installed. the device line is the mouse device - it _could_ be different on yours, but i think psaux should work. if not, try /dev/mouse. the edges, finger, maxtaptime, maxtapmove, vertscrolldelta, minspeed, maxspeed, and accelfactor are touchpad-only variables, for things like edge scrolling - i can't take credit for those, they were taken from the synaptics driver readme. ZAxisMapping sets up the scroll button in the middle - if you're using the old driver that doesn't support it, leave that line out. resolution changes the mouse resolution. it... well... basically, it makes the mouse movement more windows-like.
the indents for the middle lines are optional, i believe, but it's better organization to do it. the whitespaces can vary - for example, the spaces between the words 'Option', 'Device', and '/dev/psaux' can be either a tab, a space, multiple spaces, etc. but there has to be _some_ sort of whitespace.
now, when you have that section set up, you need to set up the serverflags section. so scroll until you find 'Section "ServerLayout"' - it's usually at the bottom. you don't have to redo this section from scratch, but you need to change the corepointer. there should be a line in there that reads
InputDevice "Mouse 1" "CorePointer"
or something similar, but 'Mouse 1" could be something different. you want to change that 'Mouse1'. remember the identifier for your mouse? change it to that. so, in my example above, the identifier was 'touchpad', so i would change the line to read
InputDevice "touchpad" "CorePointer"
once again, case sensitive. if you wanted to add extra mice, you would use the "SendCoreEvents" flag. so, for example, i use a usbmouse in addition to the touchpad, so i have an extra line that reads
InputDevice "usbmouse" "SendCoreEvents"
... just in case you had that kind of line and was wondering what it did, or you have another mouse section you want to use in combination.
at this point, you should be done. i don't know if you're using more than one mouse - if so, you would want the AllowMouseOpenFail serverflag - i'll assume you don't, and if you need me to, i can tell you where to put that.
so now that you're done, press Escape to get back out into command mode. the "--INSERT--" should disappear. now, on commands in vi:
almost all commands start with a colon. so, in command mode, if you type ':', you should see a colon appear in the bottom line. after that you would put a letter that matches a command. the 'write' command (save changes to disk, basically) is w. so to write, you would type that colon so it appears on the bottom, type a w, and press enter. so the full command at the bottom would look like
':w'
at the bottom when you pressed enter. the quit command is q, so it's the same thing, but a q instead. so
':q'
you can also combine commands, so
':wq' will write and then quit.
if you mess up, and want to quit to start over, adding an exclamation point is... kind of a 'force'. so
':q!' quits without saving changes. so you can run vi on the file again, and start from the saved version.
after that, you're done. you can do a
'cd'
with no arguments to change back to your home directory. i don't know if you use root or a regular user - if you want to go back to a regular user, issue a 'Control-d' on a blank command line to logout, and then re-login with your normal user. if you want to test it, the command to run x is 'startx'. or, if you wanted to test that login screen, you could reboot - by either issuing a 'reboot' or 'shutdown -r now' as root, or just pressing control-alt-delete if redhat has that three-finger-salute set up, i don't know. when it boots back up, it should enter that login screen, using your new x config, and that touchpad should work.
... i think i covered everything. if something doesn't work, let me know.
you have the same one i have - 8887V, plus a little customization. the mouse setup should be independent of the firewire and pcmcia problem.
