another 5 button mouse trouble thread

ok, i'm using KDE / Xorg / FreeBSD 5.3, and i was having problems with my scroll wheel and buttons 4 and 5 (or 6 and 7, however you see it). my mouse is a GE brand, PS/2, 5 button, optical mouse with the 4th and 5th buttons on the sides, and I was using a KVM switch. so, after doing seraches on this and fiddling with my computer (including connecting the mouse directly to the box and using sysinstall to detect it again), i got the scroll wheel to work right. however, it is not detecting the additional buttons at all.

i tried xmodmaping, but i got the error:

xmodmap: commandline:0: bad number of buttons, must have 5 instead of 7

i tried xev, and i can detect only mouse movements, left click, right click, scroll button, and scroll up and down. I mean, i click on the far left and right mouse buttons, and it xen reports nothing when i do.

[edit to add] here is my current entry in xorg.conf for my mouse:

Section "InputDevice"
	Identifier  "Mouse0"
	Driver      "mouse"
	Option	    "Protocol" "auto"
	Option	    "Device" "/dev/sysmouse"
	Option	    "Buttons" "5"
	Option	    "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection

I tried the ExplorerPS/2 protocol and it made Xorg not want to work. [end edit]


Also, the cursor seems to be twitchy when i move the mouse slowly. i don't notice the same thing with the install of Bloatdows on the same computer. It's an optical mouse. Does anyone know how to address this?


and since i'm asking about my mouse i might as well get this out of the way: i have 4 additional buttons on my Logitech keyboard for "WWW" "E-mail" "Favorites" and "Mute" (an odd set up IMO, but whatever). It would be nice to get them working in FreeBSD, but not important to me. can anyone help (i'd just search on this too, but i'm strapped for time now and it isn't really a big deal if i do get them set up)? also, big bonus if i can customize what they do (i won't use "Favorites" so maybe set that do do something else?).

Ok, after editting that post i realized i hadn't changed xorg.conf since i fiddled with it last night.

i changed ZAxisMapping to "6 7" ... and it is kind of weird. scrolling and the extra buttons no longer work, but when i do try toe scroll, Konqueror acts like it wants to scroll but it doesn't. It's hard to explain.

Hey... xmodmap worked...

scrolling now works, but extra buttons don't. and here is the weird part: according to xev when i alternate between scrolling up and down or vice versa it counts it as 4 or 5 (respectively) AND 6 and 7. Now i'm just confused.

Changed "Buttons" to 7. stil doesn't work

bump.

OK, I don't have a mouse with extra buttons as yours, but this is what I did and it works for me, you might change a bit xorg.conf to your number of buttons...

1) First thing I did was to edit /etc/rc.conf. I added the following line at the EOF:

moused_flags="-z4"

Make sure that you also have:


moused_enable="YES"
moused_type="auto"


2) Edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf

What I did here was to locate the Section Input device and add a line with the number of buttons my mouse has:


Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Mouse0"
Driver "mouse"
Option "Protocol" "auto"
Option "Device" "/dev/sysmouse"
Option "Buttons" "5"
EndSection


You might want to change the line "Option Buttons 5" to your mouse number of buttons... This process works with a PS2 mouse, so if you've an USB, things might change slightly. You also need to restart/kill the moused process or reboot for the changes to take effect.

Good luck!

sorry for not replying... i've been busy over the holiday weekend. i'll get back to this and try out your recommendations as soon as i get a chance to mess with my FreeBSD computer again. ... and report back the results.

Originally posted by Megaman X OK, I don't have a mouse with extra buttons as yours, but this is what I did and it works for me, you might change a bit xorg.conf to your number of buttons... 1) First thing I did was to edit /etc/rc.conf. I added the following line at the EOF: moused_flags="-z4" Make sure that you also have: moused_enable="YES" moused_type="auto"

ok. i do have a PS/2 mouse, and i've got my xorg.conf set right.

i did what you suggest above. the scroll seems to be functioning the way it should (xev doesn't report the artifacts it was), but now it isn't responding to the additional buttons at all.

just curious, how do you restart the moused without totally rebooting?

Hi again mate

I really am not sure how to get the extra buttons to actually work . I would not even know that in Linux, which I'm still much more comfortable with .

However, you can keep playing around with the button numbers at your Xfree/xorg. To restart moused, first you've to kill the process with killall -9 moused, then restart it with:

moused -p /dev/psm0 -z4

You'll need to restart the X server too. I hope that works. I did not test the above, since I'm on XP now playing SW Battlefront . Good luck though .

I've found this on google that may help you, don't know... it's a shot in the dark for me, but we never know

http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/f...ry/035185.html

apparently, you've to add another flag to the mouse daemon:

moused_flags="-3 -z 4"

at your /etc/rc.conf, but read the hole link anyway

Best Regards!

that didn't work.

i've actually asked this in a couple of places, and it sounds like i'm not the only one having this problem.

thank you for trying to help so far, though.

maybe try setting your mouse type to something that has mouse wheel, i have the -z4 flag for the mouse in rc.conf, the ZAxisMapping line for the xorg.conf, and for the mouse type i used thinkingmouse for /dev/psm0 in rc.conf, at boot i get this line like ps2!=thinkingmouse, but witht that line, my usb mouse has wheel support. this might just be blabbering. good luck