external USB mouse and keyboard crash / hang randomly

[end]

I just installed the latest LMDE 201204 on my dell latitude e6420 notebook. I love it : )

But a very annoying error appeared (not before on LMDE upgrade pack 3):

Mouse crashes randomly. And so does the keyboard! Not the built in ones, those are fine. But the USB external ones!

It ruins my love badly.... : (


In detail: when mouse crashes, the pointer remains still... if i wait a couple minutes, it comes back. If i press a button on external (or internal) keyboard, it comes back. Also strange, that when my USB mouse crashes, the built in one works fine (but it does not bring my external mouse back to life). When keyboard crashes, i have to unplug and plug again to make it work again. Sometimes (like now, when i'm writing a lot), keyboard crashes for a few seconds, then comes back.... forgetting a few characters i've just typed.


It is very very annoying, making serious work almost impossible... please help me, because its driving me mad!



I tried it in MATE and Cinnamon as well, both the same. I had no problem in Gnome 2, and no problem when using Windows, and i also tried with different keyboard / mouse, same results.

[mensfort]

Hi,

you're lucky! For me, the internal mouse also stops sometimes... on a new HP laptop Pavilion g7. I hope this is solved quickly, else I may change the operating system.

[end]

Well, i dont feel so lucky, i would prefer your situation, but of course, not in the log run.... : )

Anyway, while waiting for solution (probably some upgrade will fix these bugs in the future), i decided to do something for myself:
1. i installed regular debian stable, converted it to testing
2. installed mate
3. installed mint menu

It took a whole day, a lots of pain, but finally, my system is stable, i have mate, and the most important: i have my favorite mint menu : )

Additionally my grub background image was converted to my favorite universe style debian image : )


As soon as there is a fix, a put back LMDE.... or not, since i tend to be a linux expert after hacking around : )


Cheers

[end]

I was celebrating too early.... the same problem came back on my own built debian/mate/mintmenu combo.

Sad : (

(during this post, my mouse crashed two times, and my keyboard had once a 3 second delay)


HELP!

[dek1999]

Me too. I am have the exactly the same problem as you. I am using E6420 with Debian testing. No idea how to fix it.
Did you get this message at startup?
sdhci-pci 0000:09:00.1: Invalid iomem size. You may experience problems.

[Inkit]

I don't know if this is your problem, but open system monitor to see if your CPU usage is spiking. Although I'm no expert, it seems like this is the problem, especially when you consider that Gnome 3 is very resource intensive. Another option is for you to install xfce and see if the problem persists. If not, you know what the culprit is.
I'm saying this because I have a netbook where I have an external keyboard and it happens a lot to me. I installed xfce and no problem since then.

[end]

I could find any solution, so i put back LMDE 201109, without net connection, changed the reps to gnome-frozen, and updated. Now i have no problem with mouse / keyboard, and everything works just fine like before : )

I do have now "sdhci-pci 0000:09:00.1: Invalid iomem size. You may experience problems." message at startup, and i think i had it with LMDE 201204, so i guess its not related.

I did not check CPU usage when i had this problem, but it felt something like this, worth to see... I also changed theme, which is not a good idea in mate as i recently read.

I never used xfce before, but i wonder, is it possible to install mate-desktop on xfce edition? Would it still involve some gnome3 packs if so?

[dek1999]

I could find any solution, so i put back LMDE 201109, without net connection, changed the reps to gnome-frozen, and updated. Now i have no problem with mouse / keyboard, and everything works just fine like before : )

I do have now "sdhci-pci 0000:09:00.1: Invalid iomem size. You may experience problems." message at startup, and i think i had it with LMDE 201204, so i guess its not related.

I did not check CPU usage when i had this problem, but it felt something like this, worth to see... I also changed theme, which is not a good idea in mate as i recently read.

I never used xfce before, but i wonder, is it possible to install mate-desktop on xfce edition? Would it still involve some gnome3 packs if so?

What is gnome-frozen?
I have changed to using cinnamon on Debian testing, and fixed the problem too.

[Inkit]

MATE is only a desktop environment as is xfce, kde, Gnome3 and a few others. And you can install any environment on the base install. Unfortunately I don't think there is any metapackage for the mate desktop environment, so installing mate may be an issue unless you download the iso. If you're trying out different DE's why not go the whole hog and try out kde. I've always heard that kde was system intensive, but once I installed I found that it's really not, and that it's also more intuitive to use than Gnome. Just make sure that you disable the nepomuk indexing thing and at idle it's just as good as Gnome was.

[end]

What is gnome-frozen? - if you have a LMDE distro before LMDE 201204, like LMDE 201109, you get update packs from mint, and update pack 4 is basically LMDE 201204, where the good old gnome2 becomes the new gnome3. You get 3 options from this point:
1. Cinnamon (which is cool, but personally i dont like)
2. MATE, which is a new pack for gnome2. Its still very incomplete and buggy (and i think it might causes the original USB mouse and keyboard problem)
3. gnome2-frozen - it does some update, but keeps gnome2 on - not a long term solution

When i do either 1. or 2., i get the USB mouse and keyboard problem. If a put on a fresh install LMDE 201204 i get USB mouse and keyboard problem.
But, if i start from LMDE 201109 (no network during install!), and update it changing the latest word in the repros by gnome2-frozen, there is no problem with the mouse/keyboard. I guess its a hardware specific problem with DELL Latitude e6420 notebooks, so my advice is to install/update this "gnome2-frozen" way until the mouse/keyboard problem resolves.

Link for setting up the repros: http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=1944

[end]

KDE is an interesting one, i was thinking to give it a try, then i found this: http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=190&t=100582, so maybe next time : )

MATE supposed to be a full desktop environment, but i guess it is still depending on gnome... for example, the login window is gmd3, even using MATE. I had some more issues using MATE, some might be related to the mouse problem:
1. i had duplicated icons for some apps, one gnome version, and one MATE version, like Calculator, Take Screenshot, and some others (even in system preferences)
2. i had nautilus (gnome version) and caddy (MINT version) mixed up and running parallel, for example caddy opening from mint menu, nautilus opening from chromium when opening dir for a downloaded file.
3. i had nautilus and caddy crashing randomly, without any warning (this might be related to the original mouse/keyboard problem)
4. most of the apps are the same as in gnome, but one of them, Sound Preferences is something completely different, and i couldn't make my HDMI give out sound, and i couldn't make my bluetooth headset work with it.

+1 i gave a try to linuxmint lisa (ubuntu based) with MINT, i did not have the mouse/keyboard problem. I decided not to use it after finding out that Power Manager and Screensaver apps are missing from 64bit version...

So MATE feels incomplete so far, but as a gnome2 fan, i have all my hope in it.I personally will wait for next update, and will share my experiences.

[Inkit]

KDE is an interesting one, i was thinking to give it a try, then i found this .... so maybe next time

That is of course up to you, but just in case you want to give it a shot. I too get the same error, but it was solved when I first updated my system and then installed KDE-full. If you try installing KDE on a system that is not up to date, it gives you this unresolved dependency issues. There are basically no problems to the install except that you will get a notification asking you if you want to use gdm or kdm as your login screen. I chose kdm, but you can continue to use gdm without any problem.

[dek1999]

I have switched to using lightdm instead of the default gdm used in debian. The freezing of usb input devices ceases no matter what WM i use Gnome3, xfce, cinnamon.
To conclude, the problem is probably caused by gdm.

[Inkit]

To conclude, the problem is probably caused by gdm.

That's a first for me.
Anyway, can you edit your first post and put in solved at the beginning. That way anyone with similar problems who's searching for an answer will know that yours has been resolved. May help them with their problem.

[end]

Well, i still get this mouse/keyboard problem when using LMDE 201204 latest with MATE, so problem is NOT SOLVED. My fallback is LMDE 201109 upgraded with gnome2-frozen, because it works perfectly. I would like to use latest LMDE, but i can't because this mouse/keyboard thing.
I am still not convinced whether its a kerner, debian, gdm3, mint or MATE problem, but because the only "positive" reply came from a same Dell Latitude e3420 notebook i use, i guess its hardware related.

So i'm still waiting for solution or anyone who gets the same problem!

THX

[äxl]

http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=190&t=100582, so maybe next time : )

Looks solved to me.

MATE [...] login window is gmd3, even using MATE.

MDM: viewtopic.php?f=190&t=100141

1. i had duplicated icons for some apps, one gnome version, and one MATE version, like Calculator, Take Screenshot, and some others (even in system preferences)

Removing Gnome should solve this problem.

2. i had nautilus (gnome version) and caddy (MINT version) mixed up and running parallel, for example caddy opening from mint menu, nautilus opening from chromium when opening dir for a downloaded file.

You probably mean Caja (not caddy) and it's more of a settings problem that you should be able to resolve yourself.

3. i had nautilus and caddy crashing randomly, without any warning (this might be related to the original mouse/keyboard problem)

Nope, I have this problem with Caja too. Though it's decreasing with updates.

MATE, which is a new pack for gnome2. Its still very incomplete and buggy

It's not a "pack for Gnome2". I hope it is able to replace Gnome 2. As I said I have no problems or bugs although I'm tracking the mate-desktop.org repositories (which need some pkgs from Debian Wheezy I should add).

To your problem - I'm just guessing here. This could be related to idling devices. Could you post the output of:

Code: Select all

cat /sys/bus/usb/devices/*/power/level

[dek1999]

$ cat /sys/bus/usb/devices/*/power/level
auto
auto
on
on
on
on
auto
auto
auto

[dek1999]

Are you using BIOS version A08 or below?
I have just upgraded to the latest version A13 and the nasty behaviour went away.
The link below gave me the hint.
http://serverfault.com/questions/23986/ ... s-on-vista