[Gllug] Controversial Joel Spolsky article

[Nix]

On Tue, 16 Dec 2003, Christopher Currie said:
> But the bad news is that since about October the SuSe Linux has 
> developed a randomly freezing mouse cursor; 

Is it only the mouse cursor which stalls? If the rest of the system
ticks on OK then you're in luck: simple diagnostics is much easier.

> [The mouse is a Microsoft Intellimouse with 2 buttons & hamster wheel, and

I don't know this device. Does it have a PS/2 or serial interface?

Luckily it's easy to tell if it's a hardware problem or not :)

If it is just the mouse which stalls, have a look at /proc/interrupts
when the mouse stalls, waggle it, have a look again, and see if the
interrupt count for the appropriate device (psaux or serial) climbs when
you waggled. If it does, then your hardware is fine and it's a software
problem. If it doesn't climb, then it's a hardware problem: the
interrupts aren't reaching the machine.

(What the problem might actually be, I have no idea as yet, and if it
turns out to be a hardware problem I'll leave it to the hardware gurus
on the list. ;) )

-- 
`...some suburbanite DSL customer who thinks kernel patches are some
 form of military insignia.' --- Bob Apthorpe
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