MS mouse in mandrake

[tm37]

I got my linux box all up and running and bought a KVM so I could have both comps running with the same stuff.

I have run into a small problem with my MS intellimouse optical. The wheel does not work.

The side buttons (usually forward and back in windows XP) allow me to scroll, but the wheel does not.

the mouse works fine in XP.

 

[cleverhandle]

Most KVM's don't work well with the mouse wheel and Linux, due to the way the KVM's emulate the mouse when switched away from the machine. If your unit simply ignores the wheel movement, consider yourself fortunate - with many combinations, a wheel mouse goes crazy behind a KVM. In any event, there's probably no way around this.

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

Is it a USB mouse? If so, the kvm shouldn't affect it (as long as it's usb end to end).

You have 2 buttons, a wheel, and then 2 extra buttons on the sides? That means you have 7 buttons.

First you need to edit XF86Config and tell it you have a 7 button mouse and that the Z axis is buttons 6 and 7 (it's always the last two). Like this:

Option "Protocol" "ExplorerPS/2"
Option "Buttons" "7"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "6 7"

Then you need to remap the wheel to buttons 4 and 5 since apps expect those buttons to be the wheel. Run this command:

xmodmap -e 'pointer = 1 2 3 6 7 4 5'

You'll need to run that every time X starts, but how exactly to do that depends on how you run X.

 

[tm37]

it is a USB mouse, plugged into a ps2 adaptor, which is into the KVM



so it goes mouse (usb)-> USB/PS2 Adaptor -> KVM -> two comps

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

You might or might not be out of luck. Open a terminal and 'cat /dev/psaux'. Click the non-working buttons and see if any garbage is printed in the terminal. Hopefully there should be.

 

[tm37]

Originally posted by: BingBongWongFooey
You might or might not be out of luck. Open a terminal and 'cat /dev/psaux'. Click the non-working buttons and see if any garbage is printed in the terminal. Hopefully there should be.

I will try this tonight.

Scrolling the wheel makes the mouse "click" and the side buttons make it scroll.

I am at work now and I am going to be working late (til 9 PM at least).

So I will either check this tonight or tommorow

 

[Kadarin]

Even though you're running Mandrake, take a look at the gentoo forums; I seem to recall threads and documentation on this.

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

Originally posted by: tm37

Scrolling the wheel makes the mouse "click" and the side buttons make it scroll.

It sounds like mandrake did most of the work for you then. Try the xmodmap command and see if that makes it work correctly.

 

[tm37]

Originally posted by: BingBongWongFooey

Originally posted by: tm37

Scrolling the wheel makes the mouse "click" and the side buttons make it scroll.

It sounds like mandrake did most of the work for you then. Try the xmodmap command and see if that makes it work correctly.

tryed that command and it did nothing.

am I supposed to have that 'in there?

 

[tm37]

when i try to put in the 'the computer beeps at me

then when I press return it just goes to the next line.
[root@192 root]# # xmodmap - e pointer = 1 2 3 6 7 4 5
[root@192 root]# xmodmap - e pointer = 1 2 3 6 7 4 5

 

[tm37]

restarted and it works

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

Paste the command exactly as I typed it. -e not - e

 

[tm37]

It is working now


but yeah I see where I screwed up.

While I enjoy learning new thing sometimes it can get extreamly frusatrating.

 

[CTho9305]

Originally posted by: tm37
It is working now


but yeah I see where I screwed up.

While I enjoy learning new thing sometimes it can get extreamly frusatrating.

A hint, if you get a lot of "RTFM" or "shut up n00b" responses from the "l33t" linux crowd... instead of saying, "How do I get my mouse wheel to work?", say "Linux sucks! My wheel works automatically in windows, but not in linux". You'll get 50 replies saying how to do it . Of course, with people like bingbongwongfooey & nothinman around, you generally won't have to do that .