Description of problem:

'gpm' package provides a file '/etc/sysconfig/gpm' and in it
there are lines like

DEVICE="/dev/input/mice"
MOUSETYPE="exps2"

But looking closer at /etc/init.d one can find there:

[ -e /etc/sysconfig/gpm ] && . /etc/sysconfig/gpm

MOUSECFG=/etc/sysconfig/mouse
....

        if [ -f "$MOUSECFG" ]; then
                . "$MOUSECFG"
        else
                echo $"(no mouse is configured)"
                exit 0
        fi

and in $MOUSECFG, which happens to be written by system-config-mouse
things like:

MOUSETYPE="imps2"
DEVICE=/dev/input/mice

so those from /etc/sysconfig/gpm are totally ineffective and
there is not even a comment there to alert a user to this
detail if s/he would try to do any adjustments by editing that
file. Well, yes, one things remains:

# Additional options for gpm (e.g. acceleration), device
OPTIONS=""

but that is about it.