[comp.sys.next] Mouse stopped working

mwu@TERI.BIO.UCI.EDU (Matt Wu) (12/14/90)

Yes, I know, two cries for help in the same day is a bit 
excessive. However, I never in my wildest imaginings thought 
that it would be so easy to wreak havok.

I followed the instructions in "Configuring a Modem for tip 
and UUCP Software" in the "Network and System Administration" 
manual. I ran tip and discovered it didn't work. Fine. 
However, for some reason, tip didn't just stop. It remained 
running as a process even after I tried to kill it and even 
after I tried to kill -9 it. So I figured, no big deal, I'll 
just power down and power up again.

Of course when I started to reboot, instead of going through 
the normal process, it gives me a window that's about an 
eighth the size of the screen of the Mach operating system. 
Oh great, I think, and type exit. The boot process continues 
as it normally does and I think Cool, no prob. Then I realize 
the mouse doesn't work (well, the mouse doesn't move anything 
around; when I clicked the menu button, a new menu appeared, 
but that was the only marker as to where the mouse was, and 
the menu did not move when I moved the mouse).

Okay. So I figured if I just replace the files I changed 
(/etc/ttys and /etc/remote) it'd work fine. Yeah, right. 
Thinking that I may have typed them wrong, I went to my 
roommate's NeXT and copied the files onto floppy. Still no 
change.

Can anyone offer any suggestions?

Matt Wu
mwu@teri.bio.uci.edu

mwu@teri.bio.uci.edu (Matt Wu) (12/15/90)

Thanks to everyone who answered my request for help regarding 
the mouse.

Apparently, the problem was caused by corruption in the file 
system (it is not at all an impossibility that I am misusing 
the term). Anyway, following someone's suggestion, I did a 
fsck on the disk and, after rebooting (and running fsck again 
and rebooting) everything worked fine. I guess the /etc/ttys 
and /etc/remote files had nothing to do with the problem 
whatsoever.

Considering this is the second problem I've had in about as 
many days, I guess I won't be trying to do anything involving 
hardware changes until the weekend is over, so there'll at 
least be a chance that I can reach someone by phone. Who 
knows? I might end up shutting down the neighborhood if I try 
to do something complex like hooking up a printer :-).

Matt Wu
mwu@teri.bio.uci.edu