Fix RHEL 5 on VMware: Mouse Not Working in GUI

Quick one-liner: RHEL 5 on VMware has no mouse pointer in the GUI? The xorg.conf is missing the vmmouse driver. Add these lines and you're back in business.

🤔 Why This Matters

When installing RHEL 5 on VMware or ESXi, the generated /etc/X11/xorg.conf sometimes omits the mouse driver configuration. You get a desktop — but no mouse pointer. Keyboard-only navigation gets old fast.

🔧 The Fix

Edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf and add these two sections:

Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier     "Default Layout"
    Screen      0  "Screen0" 0 0
    InputDevice    "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
    InputDevice    "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
    Identifier  "Mouse0"
    Driver      "vmmouse"
    Option      "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
    Option      "Name" "Mouse on VMware"
EndSection

The key addition is the Mouse0 section with the vmmouse driver.

🔧 Apply the Changes

Restart the X server or reboot the VM:

sudo init 3 && sudo init 5

Or simply reboot:

sudo reboot

Your mouse pointer should work immediately.

Note: This applies to RHEL 5 on VMware/ESXi only. Newer RHEL versions (7+) use Wayland/Xorg with auto-detection and don't need manual xorg.conf edits.