RE: [TCLUG:4769] mouse/HDD noise

["Eric Hillman" <ehillman@cccu.com>]

> She's been running RedHat Linux 5.2 and Windows 95 in a dual-boot
> configuration on a Pentium system for about 2 months.  Recently she needed
> to make available a serial port, so she removed the serial port adapter
> from her Logitech MouseMan trackball, and plugged the trackball into the
> PS/2 port on the motherboard.
>
> Now when she uses Windows, everything's okay.  But when she uses Linux,
> whether in X or at the console with gpm, she hears a noise when she moves
> the mouse.  After removing the cover from her PC and putting her ear near
> its innards, she's determined that the noise is not coming from the
> internal modem speaker or the PC speaker.  It seems to be coming from the
> the hard drives.
>
> Any ideas?

	My first guess would be that the mouse driver is corrupted, or you're
running the wrong one, or the system is underpowered or overworked, or that
for some other reason, using the mouse is causing Linux to suddenly start
swapping to disk.  The sound you hear is common on machines straining under
a very heavy load, both Linux and Windows.

	You could confirm this by running 'top' (or 'top -q' to run top with no
delay between refreshes) in an xterm window or on your desktop, and then
moving the mouse to see if swap usage spikes.

	You might also want to look for hog processes in top.  'man top' will give
you a list of the commands you can use to make this easier.  Note that it is
normal for some processes, like apache httpd, to grab as much physical
memory as they possibly can -- they're supposed to scale back when the
system starts swapping to disk.  However, if you're not using these
services, you may want to disable them.

	There's a 'mouse-test' program that might help reconfigure your mouse.  It
is, however, possible that your kernel doesn't have decent support of the
PS/2 port, in which case a recompile might be necessary, or a module may
need to be installed...  You might want to examine /var/log/dmesg (a record
of your last bootup) to see if you can see anything out of the ordinary
regarding the PS/2 port.