slashdot_commentator's Journal: Kernel 2.6, wheel mouse, and KVMs

(Yet another /. rejection. Not unsurprising, since its so esoteric, but I know quite a few guys with this problem:)

For some geeks, one box cannot do it all (well). You need your reliable server, your Windows PC (for games and Windows-centric applications), your firewall/VPN, and one or two more boxes for experiments. Or you're the poor SOB who administers all the machines for your family. (Et cetera...) KVMs are really sweet for such setups, but not if you dropped $150 for a Belkin Omniview F1DS104U and run (Slackware) Linux.

Anyone afflicted with similar setups know that the Linux doesn't handle Belkin's (or generic) KVM switching between machines properly. The KVM doesn't retain/transmit mouse information between machines, and you end up with an erratic mouse that will corrupt your GUI configuration. With the 2.4 kernel, this is worked around by flipping out and back into of GUI mode (ctrl-alt-F1 then ctrl-alt-F7) with each machine switch.

But recently, I took the plunge to kernel 2.6.13. (It seemed stable enough.) It does things differently enough that I cannot use the mode switch kludge to get around the problem. The only way I've found to resolve the problem is opening a CLI session, and removing and restoring the psmouse module. Needless to say, this pretty much kills the convenience functionality of a KVM.

And my friend Google has let me down. Some users have found that adding an "append=psmouse.proto=imps" in lilo.conf resolves the problem for them. (Slackware 10.2's kernel never heard of it.) So, does anyone have a solution yet that resolves this problem, or USD $275+ to lend me for the "get a real KVM" response? Or are a bunch of linux geeks stuck running a 2.4 kernel for another year?"