Howto: external mouse + horizontall scroll (Ubuntu update)

Hey all,

I just picked up a v450 logitech mouse with one of these:



(Great for leaving in the left usb port all the time, and very affordable if you're sick of the touchpad). i got mine for the equivalent of about $37 us.

Took me a little while to get the horizontall scroll working, and since it's not immediately obvious thought I'd save you all the headache of getting something like this setup. Should work for most recent mice, not necessarily logitech, but doesn't seem to work for trackball mice (yup I've tried).

Step 1

Plug in the mouse and run

Code:

cat /proc/bus/input/devices

And look for an entry for your mouse, mine looks something like:

There may be more than one similar entry, look for the Handler line that says "mouse". Make sure you write down the exact name highlighted in red above. You'll need it for step 2.

Step 2

Next we're going to edit the dreaded xorg.conf file (yeah sorry guys, there's no better way for now).

First, backup:

Code:

sudo cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11.xorg.conf.backup

Now edit

Code:

sudo mousepad /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Look for a section that starts with:

Note: This applies to Linpus. On Ubuntu or other system, your Identifier may look different. On Hardy it's "Configured mouse". Look for a mouse related "InputDevice" that's not synaptics and you'llbe fine.

And comment out the whole thing by adding # to the start, so it looks like this:

Right below it, cut and paste the following:

Ubuntu Users: You need one extra line of code, due to an upstream bug in Hardy:

Replace the bit in green with the relevant device for your mouse. To find out what the device is in your case, run

Code:

ls -la | grep event-mouse

The output should be the name you enter in green above.

Also: if you're not using linpus make sure the "Identifier" is the same as the one you've commented out - do not change the Identifier from your existing config.

Then make sure you change the part in red to the name you obtained in Step 1.

Step 3

Double and triple check all the "" in the file. I'm serious, a missing or extra one and you won't be able to boot back up. (which is easy to restore if you have a backup and a livecd, just don't say I didn't warn ya! )

Now you can reboot and try out the horizontal scrolling for yourself.

If you have issues with horizontall scrolling in your browser, but in other programs like your PDF reader it works fine, please read up on how to enable horizontal scrolling in your browser - it may have been turned off at some point.

Have fun!

 

Re: Howto: external mouse + horizontall scroll (yes another one)

Doesn't seem to work in Ubuntu 8.04.1, tried changing the Identifier from Mouse0 to Mouse 1 with no success.

Also, my xorg.conf showed

Code:

Section "InputDevice"
	Identifier	"Configured Mouse"
	Driver		"mouse"
	Option		"CorePointer"
EndSection

as opposed to your

Code:

#Section "InputDevice"
# Identifier "Mouse0"
# Driver "mouse"
# Option "Protocol" "IMPS/2"
# Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
#EndSection

Care to disclose which OS/version you're using?

*edit*
my xorg.conf didn't have any mouse0 entries to begin with, only the cat had any

 

Re: Howto: external mouse + horizontall scroll (yes another one)

ah, sorry it's for Linpus - I thought it was understood that Ubuntu related stuff goes into its own section - my bad.

Still should work fine, you jist need to know a bit more about how the xorg.conf file works to apply the changes

Youalready got the right section, actually. The "identifier" is just an arbitrary name, Mouse0 happens to be the default in Linpus. In your case, change

Code:

Section "InputDevice"
   Identifier   "Configured Mouse"
   Driver      "mouse"
   Option      "CorePointer"
EndSection

to

Code:

Section "InputDevice"
	Identifier  "Configured Mouse"
	Driver      "evdev"
	Option	    "Name" "Logitech USB Receiver"
  	Option	    "Protocol" "evdev"
  	Option	    "Buttons" "9"
  	Option	    "SendCoreEvents"
  	Option	    "HWHEELRelativeAxisButtons" "7 6"
EndSection

I know it's a confusing piece of a configuration file, but there's also plenty of documentation on how it works

Hope that works for you, I'll make an edit to the howto

 

Re: Howto: external mouse + horizontall scroll (yes another one)

Didn't work for me.

My Logitech V450 Nano has the same name as yours in /proc/bus/input/devices, and I've done some xorg wrangling in the past but couldn't suss this.

Here is what I had in xorg. End result. error at boot regards not being able to open the display, but easy to fix from bash. Move the comments, all works, move them back, all broken.

Ideas?

Ian

 

Re: Howto: external mouse + horizontall scroll (yes another one)

My xorg log for when it failed is here.

http://fra.foxhill.co.uk/Xorg.0.log.old

Boy, does it woffle on a bit!

Ian

 

Re: Howto: external mouse + horizontall scroll (yes another one)

Thanks for posting the log, but can you please post your whole xorg.conf file?

 

Re: Howto: external mouse + horizontall scroll (yes another one)

OK,

http://fra.foxhill.co.uk/xorg.conf

Many thanks for helping me with this. I'm guessing it's something stoopid, but I've checked a few times, and I did use cut and paste to put the new stuff in, and I'm just not spotting it.

BTW, with fuse-smb setup on my AAO, and with a network share to the directory that my web server uses, posting this stuff is a single copy command on the AAO!

Ian

 

Re: Howto: external mouse + horizontall scroll (yes another one)

Hey Ian,

Try replacing this section

Replace the text in red with, SendCoreEvents, so that the line now looks like this:

Code:

	InputDevice    "Mouse0" "SendCoreEvents"

It's a bit complicated why this happens, but what happens is you have two core (default) pointers now in your xorg, and it doesn't know how to choose between them

 

Re: Howto: external mouse + horizontall scroll (yes another one)

Excellent, works a treat, in both Open Office and Firefox, so I guess everywhere.

Any idea why I needed that extra tweak and others didn't?

Ian

 

Re: Howto: external mouse + horizontall scroll (yes another one)

I think in your case it was like you said - you've already tried quite a few things to get it going, so it must have been a tweak from somewhere else. I worked off a default xorg configuration, and probably others so no need for the extra tweak

 

Re: Howto: external mouse + horizontall scroll (yes another one)

As far as I know, my xorg.conf hasn't been changed before this, and the copy I took also has mouse0 as CorePointer.

Anyway, it's all working for me now, and let's hope no-one else hits this issue. Maybe your instructions need to briefly mention copying that backup of xorg.conf over the edited one in case of difficulty?

Ian

 

Re: Howto: external mouse + horizontall scroll (yes another one)

Ian: well yeah, but that's a whole post in inteself about what to do when the AAO can't boot because you need either a livecd, liveusb or you need to have already tweaked your system to allow you to Ctrl+Alt+F1 to a command line... which have all been covered before in other threads

 

Re: Howto: external mouse + horizontall scroll (yes another one)

In my case (and maybe all cases where xorg craps out?) I was dumped at a command line, which is generally a nice place to be at such times.

But yes, the hard part of any "how to", is "how to recover if it all goes wrong" ! There is a reason I always keep a DSL CD around, now replaced with a Puppy Linux USB stick.

Ian

 

Re: Howto: external mouse + horizontall scroll (yes another one)

Ian,

Linpus does not drop you to shell by default - it's got to be a modification you made at some point, maybe you're using the advanced desktop?

The howto covers making a backup, there is a whole subsection of the forum dedicated to recovery and numerous posts on all the different ways to get back to a bootable system. I don't see the need to rehash it all when it's available - it's what the search function is for

It's just no humanly possible to cover all the different things that can go wrong with xorg and how to fix them in this howto.

 

Re: Howto: external mouse + horizontall scroll (yes another one)

Nope, standard desktop. First time I've been dropped to the shell, but first time I've changed xorg.conf on the box.

Ian

 

Re: Howto: external mouse + horizontall scroll (yes another one)

Hmm, not totally true, I have enabled the right click menu, and added Skype to the desktop, but other than this it's all fairly vanilla.
Ian

 

Re: Howto: external mouse + horizontall scroll (yes another one)

Bizarre

 

Uber thanks to the OP, I also had to add the corepointer thingy becaue it would not boot.

But now my rocketfish nano RF mouse behaves as it should!!!!!

The tiny forward and back buttons function normally, the middle click and sidways scroll work!! YAY!!!