Middle mouse button config

[mikesmithv]

I have been having trouble with text appearing in documents that look like something I might have typed but otherwise randomly placed. After all this time I finally figured it out. Pressing the middle mouse button (scroll wheel) performs a "paste" in Ubuntu, so whatever I copied previously gets randomly "pasted" into my documents when using the scroll wheel too hard. Not good.

My question is how can I disable the scroll wheel from acting like a button? I found this link which seems to indicate others are having this problem:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/X/Config/Input

Scrollwheel mice support a middle-button click event when pressing the scrollwheel. This is a great feature, but you may find it irritating. Fortunately it can be disabled.

The solution they present there disables the middle button temporarily but the original configuration returns if I restart or the mouse goes to sleep and is re-awakened. Does anyone know of a way to set this configuration permanently?

These are the steps that did not work. First I get the mouse ID:

xinput list | grep 'id='

For me the mouse ID was 13. So next I get the current mapping:

xinput get-button-map 13

It returned 1 2 3 4 5 6 7. Then I write back my altered map replacing the 2 with a zero:

xinput set-button-map 13 1 0 2 3 4 5 6 7

Like I said, this fix works temporarily but I think I need to edit some config file further upstream where the defaults are set since it keep reverting.

I suspect many others are having this problem but have not figured out what's happening yet since it happens so seldom. I seems to me that it's more of a bug than a feature. The default should be to not let unsuspecting users paste text randomly. It's fine to have this as a feature but it's definitely something that should be enabled by the power user IMHO.

[Krytarik]

You should be able to achieve that using "xmodmap", works for me at least. For that, create a file called ".Xmodmap" (hidden) at the top level of your home directory with this content:

~/.Xmodmap:

pointer = 1 0 3 4 5 6 7

The next time you log in, you may be asked if you want to use that keymap file.* If so, just choose "Add" and confirm with "OK". It should work then.

* depends on what Ubuntu version you are using, and if you already had such a file before, and have already confirmed/disabled that query

Regards.

[mikesmithv]

That fixed it. Thanks. I'm using Ubuntu 12.10 and there was no message, it just came up configured when I logged in. Thanks again, that was really causing me problems.