How to get scroll mouse working again?

[Larry Alkoff]

Luis Mondesi wrote:
> On Jan 11, 2008 7:23 PM, Larry Alkoff <labradley at mindspring.com> wrote:
> 
>> I am running Kubuntu Gutsy Gibbon 7.10 and have just had the problem
>> that my scroll mouse will not scroll in Firefox or Thunderbird.
>> Normally it scrolls fine.
>>
>> I have tried various methods of getting the scroll working again including
>> /etc/init.d/gpm restart
>> and
>> logging out of KDE and restarting it
>> and
>> checking that there were no changes in /etc/X11/xorg.conf by comparing
>> it to a backup copy made over 2 months ago.
>>
>> The only thing that finally worked was to restart (cold boot) the
>> computer.
>>
>> Is there any way to get the scroll mouse working again without a cold
>> boot?
>>
> 
> cross-posting is considered "rude". see netiquette. I removed the kde*
> mailing lists from my reply.
> 
> you almost NEVER need to reboot a Linux/UNIX system. in this case,
> restarting X is just fine. And you could've done any of these:
> 
> - /etc/init.d/kdm restart
> - CTRL+ALT+Backspace (kills X)
> - killall -9 X
> - pkill -9 X
> - sudo telinit 1; # then exit or CTRL-D to go back to runlevel 2 or whatever
> your default is
> ...
> 
> you get the idea?
> 
> the only times you need to reboot are:
> 
> 1. a new kernel
> 2. kernel panic
> 3. a new third-party driver (especially nvidia and ATI drivers)
> 4. other computer freezes (hardware related usually, because Linux NEVER
> freezes :-P)
> 
> 

I agree that a reboot is almost never necessary in Linux.

However, I tried the first two methods you suggested without success:
   /etc/init.d/kdm restart
   CTRL+ALT+Backspace (kills X)

The fact that these both kill X suggests that there is something missing 
that a reboot does.  That's what I'd like to find.

Larry