[Slack64] Logitech 7-button mouse -- how to make TILT buttons (tilt-wheel) work?
 

Finally (or no longer) the Gentoo Wiki/Docs haven't been able to help me make the wheel-tilt buttons work.

I see a few similar or near-identical threads, but following them hasn't worked either.

Goal: Use the tilt wheel to go BACK/FWD in Firefox

Problem: No signal or code is detected from the tilt action.

I've been at this for a couple hours now. Tried the usual button-mappings in xorg.conf, which I'm still/always using anyhow:
The scroll wheel works fine, but tilting does nothing. Firefox itself is configured correctly via about:config to use the tilt for BACK/FWD.
Trouble is, I can't detect anything at all coming from the tilt.

`xev` reports nothing, but correctly reports all other buttons/motions.

`xmodmap -pp` lists a total of 32 buttons (most virtual I guess) and I can use `xmodmap` to rearrange the working buttons, but trying to tell xmodmap to do anything with any buttons other than 1-7 returns an error. There's definitely 7 buttons total.

As a test, I xmodmapped the scroll wheel (4+5) onto buttons 6+7 to make sure FF is configged correctly, and it is: scrolling the wheel went BACK/FWD in the browser.

I'm fairly certain 6+7 should be the tilt.

FWIW, on the other machine here, running Slack11, I used to use a 9-button mouse (wireless) and the tilt worked fine in that situation IIRC, as did the thumb buttons.

This is a fairly basic wired USB mouse. I did have it connected to PS/2 with an adapter, but eventually thought maybe that was the trouble. So I connected it right to USB, and it's identical. No change.

Also, it's worth noting that:

1-- xorg.0.log shows the mouse detected as 'ExplorerPS/2' if I set protocol='auto' in xorg.conf

2-- I'm NOT using HAL for input devices. It's disabled with the 3 magic lines in xorg.conf.

3-- I tried a few other xorg.conf options, but to no avail. Maybe they'd work, IF the dumb buttons would generate some signal.

4-- I checked "CHANGES+HINTS" and the Slack64 "CHANGELOG" but there's nothing relevant in there pertaining to this.

:banghead:Anyone have any clever ideas?
Thanks!
Sasha

If xev isn't showing anything, then chances are the buttons simply aren't supported by the driver.

Have you tried using the evdev driver yet? Unlike the standard mouse driver, it's designed specifically for handling multimedia input devices, usually without any special configuration necessary. Chances are it will be able to handle your tilt-wheel.

BTW, you might want to reconsider your decision to disable hal integration. The newest xorgs are capable of working and configuring themselves without any configuration file at all. Just today I updated my xorg installation and started having some problems with my trackball and keyboard (kde wouldn't recognize the MM buttons), so I tried removing my xorg.conf entirely, and now everything is working better than ever.

Hal autoconfiguration is also necessary if you ever want to be able to hotplug your mouse (or other devices such as drawing tablets). Without it, it's unable to redetect the extra buttons and will default to a simple ps2 mouse after reinsertion, and you'll have to restart xorg every time.

Thanks for the reply, David,

I suppose that's possible, but considering that my wireless mouse did work fine, and it had more buttons than this one, I'm skeptical about the driver not supporting the buttons. Maybe it's so... But xorg.0.log identifies the mouse as "7 Buttons" so I think/hope it should work.
Yes, I have tried using the evdev driver, and what generally happens is that X won't start. Now, I confess I'm not as familiar with configuring the evdev driver, as I am with the more common driver(s) like ExplorerPS/2 or IMPS/2, so maybe I gave it bad options; but following the Gentoo Wiki docs on the evdev driver has not worked to date. Still I will try it some more.
I may "consider reconsidering" but not any time soon, and definitely not for the sole reason of making the tilt-wheel work.

Also, I NEED an xorg.conf because Xorg &/ HAL cannot configure all my hardware (dual 3-output video cards, multiple monitors) but I WILL try (again?) commenting out the mouse section and seeing what happens without it.
While I'm not 100% on this, as far as I can tell, UDEV & Xmodmap can take care of such issues.

Thanks again :) I'll update more later after some further experimentation.

Sasha