Mesanna's Weblog

I always seem to have hassles with my mouse setup in Ubuntu.

I have an old Microsoft Comfort Optical 3000 Mouse which I’ve been using for years. It’s a fine mouse, apart from the middle-click button. I use middle-click a lot when I’m surfing to open and close tabs. I don’t like the middle button on my mouse because you have to push it really, really hard. However, there is a little thumb button which is a perfect replacement. So I have always changed the mouse mappings and swapped the middle click functions onto the thumb button. This is remarkably easy to do in Windows – probably because I’m using a Microsoft mouse. I simply opened the Mouse options in Control Panel and a little picture of the mouse would be displayed showing all the buttons and I changed whatever options I wanted in the menus. Unfortunately, it’s not quite so simple in Ubuntu.

When I first installed Ubuntu (and really had no idea what I was doing), I found it quite difficult to change the button mappings over. Sure there was a lot of documentation, but most of it was over my head. I did figure it out eventually – mostly because I am a stubborn bitch and will not allow a computer to beat me – and, like anything, once you know how, it’s pretty easy.

I decided to upgrade from Hardy Heron to Intrepid Ibex, which – so far – seems to have gone well. However my thumb button wasn’t working as it should. No problem, I thought, the xorg.conf has probably been reset to a default file. I just need to edit it and change my settings. Of course nothing is ever that simple. When I opened my xorg.conf file, a line had been inserted reading # commented out by update-manager, HAL is now used. I had no idea what HAL was (though I kept thinking of the computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey!). But I digress. HAL apparently stands for hardware abstraction layer if you’re interested (more info here). This is all well and good, but how the hell do I fix my mouse buttons?

After some Googling and trawling of the Ubuntu forums, I am writing below what worked for me. (This is as much a reference for myself, for when I next break my system and can’t remember what I did).

Firstly, you have to know which mouse button corresponds to which mapping number. This is pretty easy. Open a terminal and type xev and press enter. This will open the event viewer. This will give you a little white square which you can click on and a whole load of text will appear in the terminal. Try clicking once with the left mouse button and you should get something like this:

ConfigureNotify event, serial 34, synthetic YES, window 0×3a00001,
event 0×3a00001, window 0×3a00001, (669,49), width 178, height 178,
border_width 2, above 0×120b42b, override NO

ButtonRelease event, serial 34, synthetic NO, window 0×3a00001,
root 0×1a6, subw 0×3a00002, time 9122614, (28,35), root: (699,86),
state 0×110,button 1, same_screen YES

The only part that matters is the button number, which I have highlighted above. Try clicking again with the right mouse button, and you will probably get Button 3 for that. This lets you know which button is which. In my particular setup the middle click button is Button 2 and the thumb button is Button 9, so bascially I want to swap these two over.

Next, you have to create a policy file for your mouse. I copied some text I found for a Logitech mouse and tweaked it to suit. I opened Gedit and inserted the following text:

<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”ISO-8859-1″?>
<deviceinfo version=”0.2″>
<device>
<match key=”info.capabilities” contains=”input.mouse”>
<merge key=”input.x11_driver” type=”string”>mouse</merge>
<!– mouse tweaks –>
<match key=”info.product” string=”Microsoft Comfort Optical Mouse 3000″>
<merge key=”input.x11_options.ButtonMapping” type=”string”>1 9 3 8 2</merge>
<merge key=”input.x11_options.EmulateWheel” type=”string”>true</merge>
<merge key=”input.x11_options.EmulateWheelButton” type=”string”>8</merge>
<merge key=”input.x11_options.ZAxisMapping” type=”string”>4 5</merge>
<merge key=”input.x11_options.Emulate3Buttons” type=”string”>true</merge>
</match>
</match>
</match>
</match>
</match>
</device>
</deviceinfo>

I changed the mouse name and button mappings to suit my particular mouse, though it advised me in the original article that button mappings were being ignored, but I’ll get to that in a minute.

I saved this file into my Documents directory first, just so that I have a copy for when I break my system again! I called my file mouse.fdi (you can call it whatever name you want but you need the .fdi extension). Next, I opened the terminal and copied this file to the correct Ubuntu directory. If the file is in the Documents folder in your Home directory, use the following command:

sudo cp Documents/mouse.fdi /etc/hal/fdi/policy/

Stage 1 complete, however all the documentation I found told me I’d have to edit xmodmap to tweak the button mappings. I searched for the file and tried to open it with Gedit, but Ubuntu wouldn’t let me. I had no idea how to edit this file and most web sites just said ‘add this text to your xmodmap‘. Yes, but HOW??

Open Gedit and insert the following text:

pointer = 1 9 3 4 5 6 7 8 2

I have swapped buttons 9 and 2 over to suit my particular set up, however these can be changed to whatever you need. Now save this file and call it .xmodmap (you need the dot at the start of the name). Save this file into your username folder (i.e. /home/YourUserName) and that should be it. You need to log out, then log back in again. The first time I did this, a little box popped up asking if I wanted to load the second xmodmap file. I clicked on both the system version and my version to load them both up and hallelujah my mouse is working!

I really like Ubuntu and still haven’t booted into Windows after my last disaster, but this is a helluva hassle for people who aren’t that familiar with computers. I enjoy tinkering and learning something new, but it shouldn’t be this hard to swap a couple of mouse buttons over. Linux for human beings isn’t quite there yet.