After loosing few matches on FICS on time control, poor me realized that it’s the mouse which matters when you’ve 10-20 seconds to mate. So I got myself an usb mouse and we’ve some new adventure.
Ok, plugged in the usb mouse, checked that `lsusb` recognizes it. A `dmesg` suggested only a generic "low speed" usb device plug in. I did a `X -configure` but it didn't show up my usb mouse :( Few web pages suggested some cool ways to check if your mouse is recognized: - Do a cat /proc/bus/input/devices and look for your mouse. Get mouse model from `lsusb` - If there are multiple mice showing up in /dev/input/\* then do a `cat /dev/input/mice` and try moving your mouse, if it’s recognized you’d see random output on screen None of these worked for me. I gave up on XOrg.conf. Let's try upgrading to [Xorg input hotplugging](http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Xorg_input_hotplugging) and see if HAL does some magic. So added *hal* and *dbus* to rc.conf, pacman'ed *xf86-input-evdev*. Hotplugging totally disregards can replace/compliemt your xorg.conf, all inputs are added at runtime, real hotness! Well still my mouse was not working. After pulling out hair after hair, finally I figured out the whole story (yep! I still have a few hairs left:)). Although kernel was recognizing my usb device, it couldn't know that it was a mouse. Hence there was no device file created for the mouse in /dev/input. The missing link was **usbhid** ([USB Human Interaction Device](http://www.linux-usb.org/USB-guide/x194.html)) module. A quick `modprobe usbhid` and we're golden. The clever /me had disabled MOD\_AUTOLOAD in rc.conf, and I had listed every module loaded by my system (optimization!). Anyways hotplugging is super awesome. I enabled scroll on my [touchpad](http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Touchpad_Synaptics) this time, configuration is real easy and human readable. E.g. to disable the caps lock key, just add the following option to */etc/hal/fdi/policy/10-keymap.fdi*: `