HOWTO: Configuring Logitech mice in Ubuntu 6.06: New Guide

[babucher]

Greetings,

I've spent a number of hours reading through various threads, and am stuck, so any help would be appreciated.

--- Hardware ---
Macbook Pro 4,1 (penryn CPU) 2.5 GHz
Logitech Mx500 mouse

--- Software ---
Ubuntu 8.04 ("For standard computer")


I've installed Ubuntu sucessfully, and am now trying to get my mouse buttons working, right now for the game Wolfenstein Enemy Territory. The problem is that the thumb buttons (forward and backward) both are registering as "KP_EQUALS" instead of MOUSE4 and MOUSE5. Here is what the buttons register as in ET. If there is a better way of determining what they buttons linked to, I would appreciate information on that as well.

left mouse button: MOUSE1
right mouse button: MOUSE2
mousewheel up: MWHEELUP
mousewheel down: MWHEELDOWN
depressing the mousewheel: MOUSE3
forward thumb button: KP_EQUALS
backward thumb button: KP_EQUALS


I've followed the directions from the first post in this thread as follows:

sudo apt-get install xserver-xorg-input-evdev
cat /proc/bus/input/devices

--- begin quote ---
I: Bus=0003 Vendor=046d Product=c025 Version=0110
N: Name="B16_b_02 USB-PS/2 Optical Mouse"
P: Phys=usb-0000:00:1a.0-2/input0
S: Sysfs=/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1a.0/usb1/1-2/1-2:1.0/input/input1
U: Uniq=
H: Handlers=mouse1 event1
B: EV=20017
B: KEY=ff0000 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
B: REL=103
B: MSC=10
B: LED=ff00
--- end quote ---

Side question: Why does my Mx500 have a different name than the Mx500 as detected by detyabozhye in the first post?

sudo cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.bak
sudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf

My mouse section is now:
--- begin quote ---
Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Configured Mouse"
Driver "evdev"
Option "CorePointer"
Option "Name" "B16_b_02 USB-PS/2 Optical Mouse"
EndSection
--- end quote ---

sudo /etc/init.d/udev restart

At this point I logged out, and even restarted and logged in again. Upon logging in (and I have done this multiple times) my mouse (and trackpad) are both nonfunctional.

Any pointers at this point would be appreciated.

Thanks

[detyabozhye]

Up through 7.10 we used evdev's autodetecting for the mouse (this is talked about somewhere in the thread). Unortunately, I hear it's been removed in 8.04, and I don't have a solution for it yet because I haven't upgraded to 8.04 yet (issues with krfb), but some people have talked about it on this thread.

[smushi]

I have a Logitech optical mouse with just one extra thumb button (so 6 buttons total).
The thumb button would always read as button 2, same as wheel down.
I followed your steps to change the driver in xorg.conf to evdev, and now it just works (i.e. I can now use the thumb button to go back in firefox, which was the whole point).
I don't quite understand why I can't seem to get it working with buttonmapping and such, but thanks anyways!

sd

[Macdelaney]

I've spent the last few days trying to get this to work and just can't crack it. The back and foward thumb buttons were working without any configuration actually, the same with the search one.

My xorg.conf file looks like this

Section "InputDevice"
	Identifier	"Configured Mouse"
        Driver		"mouse"
        Option          "Phys"  "usb-0000:00:02.0-2/input0"
        Option          "CorePointer"
       Option          "Name"  "Logitech MX Revolution"
       Option          "ZAxisMapping"  "4 5" 
       Option          "Resolution"    "800" 
EndSection

I know that instead of "mouse" the Driver line should say "evdev", but if i enter evdev there, the pointer would not work anymore. I don't know what wrong, this should be right since i have the xserver-xorg-input-evdev package installed. Is there something i'm missing???? Any help would be much appreciated.

Edit: I'm guessing my problem is the same as babucher (i read up to half the thread, but the first half ) since I'm also on 8.04. I'll post back i find a solution.

Edit #2: As was posted a few pages back there's a discussion and some solutions for this at: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...ev/+bug/173833

Here i post a working sample of xorg.conf for my Mx Revolution, just added the Option "Device" part.

Section "InputDevice"
	Identifier	"Configured Mouse"
	Driver "evdev"
        Option "CorePointer"
        Option "SendCoreEvents" "true"
        Option "Device"  "/dev/input/by-id/usb-Logitech_USB_Receiver-event-mouse"

       Option          "Name"  "Logitech MX Revolution" # not necessary
       Option          "ZAxisMapping"  "4 5" # not necessary
       Option          "Resolution"    "800" # doesn't make a difference
EndSection

[bruno321]

Thanks to this howto and after reading a bit around these forums and some manual pages, I've managed to get the Logitech LX7 working perfectly.

Since the procedure was a bit custom, I'll post it, perhaps it will be of use to someone. First of all: I use Kubuntu 7.10.

After installing evdev, I had to edit xorg.conf like this:

Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier     "Layout0"
    Screen      0  "Screen0" 0 0
    InputDevice    "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
    InputDevice "Configured Mouse"
EndSection

 [...]

Section "InputDevice"
        Identifier      "Configured Mouse"
        Driver          "evdev"
        Option          "CorePointer"
        Option          "Name"  "Logitech USB RECEIVER"
EndSection

Then, I installed xbindkeys, xvkbd and xmacro, and edited ~/.xbindkeysrc like this:

#little buttons:

"/usr/bin/xvkbd -xsendevent -text "\[Alt_L]\[Left]""
  m:0x0 + b:8
"/usr/bin/xvkbd -xsendevent -text "\[Alt_L]\[Right]""
  m:0x0 + b:9

#tilt wheel:

"echo ButtonPress 2 ButtonRelease 2 Delay 0 | xmacroplay -d 0 :0.0"
release+b:11

"echo ButtonPress 2 ButtonRelease 2 Delay 0 | xmacroplay -d 0 :0.0"
release+b:12

Note that what this does is map the little left and right buttons like it is by default, but it maps the left and right wheel buttons to the middle button. This is because I wanted it to be that way. To find out that the middle button is number 2, I used xev. You could modify ButtonPress 2 ButtonRelease 2 by whatever button number you should like: that xmacroplay line just sends the signal "press and release button 2". Make sure to leave the Delay 0 at the end of the pipe, always, because xmacroplay has a bug which makes it play the last action twice. Using delay 0 is a workaround.

If you want the default config (i.e. the tilt wheel acts as horizontal scroll), I could do it like this:

#tilt wheel:

"/usr/bin/xvkbd -xsendevent -text "\[Left]""
b:11
"/usr/bin/xvkbd -xsendevent -text "\[Right]""
b:12

It didn't work as flawlessly as it should have: if you held down the wheel right, it scrolled right only a little bit, making it a bit pointless. If anyone knows how to config a smooth scroll, please say so.

In any case, using xbindkeys and proper command lines you can map the tilt wheel buttons and the right-left buttons to whatever you want. Using xvkbd you can make it "press keyboard buttons" and using xmacroplay you can make it "press mouse buttons".

[HyperHacker]

Hey, this guide is a lot of help, but I ran into a couple problems. (Just bought an MX518.)

Download and untar "click" source code into ~/.click (or wherever you want, just remember the dir, you'll need it in the .xbindkeysrc):

cd ~/
wget http://bg.rifetech.com/click.tgz
tar xvfz click.tgz
mv click .click

This link is dead, and the first couple times I read it, I thought it meant to download the source and then run this command, which left me wondering where I'm supposed to download it from.

The + and - buttons (I guess those are the "cruise control" buttons?) just change the cursor speed. Two problems with this: I can't find a comfortable speed (it jumps from too slow to too fast), and I want to map those buttons to keys (maybe ctrl+home/end) like with the back/forward buttons, but they don't generate a response in xev.

Mapping the back/forward buttons to Alt+Left/Right works, but it doesn't give focus to the window like they normally would. Before if I had another window in focus, moved the mouse over Firefox, and hit Back, it would switch to Firefox and go back a page. Now it just sends Alt+Left/Right to the window in focus.

There's also a "window" button (i.e. a button with two rectangles, like the "unmaximize" icon in most window themes' title bars) below the - button, which shows up as button 10 in xev. I wanted to use this in Compiz but it only supports buttons 1 to 9; is there a workaround for that? I tried mapping it to the same as the keyboard shortcut in .xbindkeysrc, but it doesn't work; the keypress gets sent to the window and Compiz ignores it.

Lomoco doesn't recognize the mouse:

$ sudo lomoco -8
005.002: 046d:08f0 Unsupported Logitech device: Camera
003.002: 046d:c051 Unsupported Logitech device: USB-PS/2 Optical Mouse

[detyabozhye]

Hey, this guide is a lot of help, but I ran into a couple problems. (Just bought an MX518.)This link is dead, and the first couple times I read it, I thought it meant to download the source and then run this command, which left me wondering where I'm supposed to download it from.

What version of Ubuntu are you running? Most of this guide is not needed anymore for versions 8.10 and up while 8.04 and a few other versions require a slightly different setup (talked about somewhere in the thread). As for the 'click' program, you won't need it since you have a MX518 and it has a different way of handling what are known as cruise control buttons on a MX500 and similar mice.

The + and - buttons (I guess those are the "cruise control" buttons?) just change the cursor speed. Two problems with this: I can't find a comfortable speed (it jumps from too slow to too fast), and I want to map those buttons to keys (maybe ctrl+home/end) like with the back/forward buttons, but they don't generate a response in xev.

They are the cruise control buttons on other mice, on the MX518 they have a different function (changing DPI). That function might be able to be switched on/off, but as you said later in the post, lomoco doesn't seem to support your mouse (which is needed to do the switching). Those buttons adjust the DPI of the mouse, or precision, which is needed for some games, it's not meant to adjust plain speed. To finetune the mouse speed, use the mouse settings in the control panel.

Mapping the back/forward buttons to Alt+Left/Right works, but it doesn't give focus to the window like they normally would. Before if I had another window in focus, moved the mouse over Firefox, and hit Back, it would switch to Firefox and go back a page. Now it just sends Alt+Left/Right to the window in focus.

Right, since it emulates a keyboard shortcut, and the keyboard always affects the currently focused window. Personally, I just have my back/forward buttons mapped to button 6 and 7 which do back and forward in Opera and Firefox (as an option) and also to horizontal scroll since the MX500 doesn't have a tilt wheel. I also have the 10th button mapped to a keyboard shortcut, but the focused window thing usually doesn't bug me since I have focus following the mouse.

There's also a "window" button (i.e. a button with two rectangles, like the "unmaximize" icon in most window themes' title bars) below the - button, which shows up as button 10 in xev. I wanted to use this in Compiz but it only supports buttons 1 to 9; is there a workaround for that? I tried mapping it to the same as the keyboard shortcut in .xbindkeysrc, but it doesn't work; the keypress gets sent to the window and Compiz ignores it.

Since the MX518 doesn't have a tilt wheel, it's sdandard mappings should be (in the latest version of Ubuntu):
1:click
2:middle click
3:right click
4:scroll up
5:scroll down
6 - unmapped
7 - unmapped
8:back
9:forward
10:window switcher

What you could do is set up Xmodmap to map it this way (I won't write exactly how to do it yet, since it usually takes a bit of playing around with it to get it right):
1:click
2:middle click
3:right click
4:scroll up
5:scroll down
6:back
7:forward
8:window switcher

Lomoco doesn't recognize the mouse:

$ sudo lomoco -8
005.002: 046d:08f0 Unsupported Logitech device: Camera
003.002: 046d:c051 Unsupported Logitech device: USB-PS/2 Optical Mouse

Seems that the latest MX518 had a hardware revision not supported by lomoco yet: https://dev.lomoco.org/ticket/6

[HyperHacker]

Yeah, changing the DPI does seem to be changing the speed. While it'd be nice to have maybe a keyboard shortcut to do that, I'd rather have the buttons mapped to things I'll use more often, and set the default DPI to something nice.
How would you do that in xmodmap?

(BTW, https://dev.lomoco.org has an invalid security certificate.)

[detyabozhye]

Yeah, changing the DPI does seem to be changing the speed. While it'd be nice to have maybe a keyboard shortcut to do that, I'd rather have the buttons mapped to things I'll use more often, and set the default DPI to something nice.
How would you do that in xmodmap?

Yes, DPI does change the speed, but it's not the main purpose. For regular computing, you won't need more than 400 or 800 DPI and then just adjust the mouse speed in the control panel to your liking.

You can't change the behaivior of those buttons with Xmodmap alone. You have to actually send a signal to the mouse to change the behavior, which requires a program like lomoco. Unfortunately, it seems there's nothing out there that will work (to change the behavior of those buttons) for your mouse at the moment.

[Hastrobal]

Hello,

Is it possible to bind a number from the Numeric keypad on a mouse button ?
I have a MX518 and read your guide (good guide ) but unfortunally just the normal 4 is used . I'm playing warcraft3 and wanted to bind the numeric "4" as a hotkey on the side button of my mouse.

I inserted into "xbindkeyssrc"

"/usr/bin/xvkbd -xsendevent -text "\[4]""
  m:0x0 + b:8

Best regards,
Hastrobal