Re: [PATCH] make psaux reconnect adjustable

Andries.Brouwer@cwi.nl
Tue, 14 Aug 2001 21:26:22 GMT


> PS/2 mouse protocol was designed to easily re-synchronize

Not very easily. The Microsoft protocol synchronizes after
a single packet, but the PS/2 protocol has packets of three
bytes, two of which have completely arbitrary contents,
while the first byte has arbitrary contents except that
bit 3 is always set. No doubt it takes only a few packets
to resynchronize in practice, but in theory one could have
arbitrarily long strings of ..., 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 12, 8, 8, 8, ...
and nobody knows whether the 12 was a mouse button.

> _This_ shows, user-mode must be notified of the re-connect!

Yes, we agree completely: this AUX_RECONNECT stuff should
be ripped out of the kernel, no sysctl, no ioctl, no boot param,
just out. Now gpm can handle the sequence AA 00 as it sees fit,
possibly by reinitializing the mouse, and if X gets its mouse
events via gpm it doesnt need the same code itself.

Andries
-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/