10 Button Mice

vanjab · Posted: Thu Jan 08, 2004 7:17 am Post subject: 10 Button Mice

I'm trying to find a way to get my mx700 mouse's buttons to work in linux. At the moment i have my first 5 buttons plus wheel (buttons 6 and 7 working) just fine under kernel 2.6 (using xmodmap), but i cant find a way to get the other 3 to work (the little arrows near wheel and the top most button).

I have read up on this and found a patch that treats the arrow buttons as standard buttons, and the top most button works just fine, how ever my problem is that the ExplorerPS/2 protocol only supports 7 buttons on a mouse... i need 10.

The tutorial i was following said i had to patch the kernel, install 'evdev' (some kind of mouse driver :S) and patch xfree.

I have tried to patch the kernel with the supplied patch, but the file names are different and it fails (it was called a 2.6.64 kernel patch, seems rather bogus.) I have also tried searching for 'evdev', i think it may be related to patching xfree. I'm too new to gentoo to patch xfree through ebuilds though :/

looking through these forums i have seen that a lot of people have these mice, but dont seem to bother with trying to get the other 3 buttons to work, which is a little strange :/

Does anyone have any information about this? I will post up the link to the tutorial i followed when i get home, greatly appreciated

CheshireCat · Guru Joined: 25 Aug 2002 Posts: 572

What kernel version are you using? If you're using a 2.6 kernel, you shouldn't need to patch it at all. I'm using the xfree86 evdev patches with my mx700, and I have a modified ebuild for xfree86-4.3.99.902. If you need one for an earlier version, you'll need to give me a bit to get it fixed up. I also have a local copy of a logitech ps/2 patch for xfree86, which does not require event device support, but I have not tested it at all.

Oh, yeah, and if you want to use the autoscroll buttons as buttons, you'll also need my patched copy of logitech_applet to turn autoscroll off. I find autoscroll useful enough to leave it on, rolling the wheel up and down long docs is a pain. I think the logitech ps/2 patch adds options in X to disable autoscroll, so you should only need logitech_applet if you are using the evdev stuff.

vanjab · Posted: Thu Jan 08, 2004 7:31 am Post subject:

really? I'd really appreciate these patches.
Im running kernel 2.6 and mainly want these buttons for games.
could you email me the patch and ebuild pls?
poopie_monstar@hotmail.com
ty

CheshireCat · Guru Joined: 25 Aug 2002 Posts: 572

I've tarred up what should be all of the necessary files for xfree-4.3.0-r3 and xfree-4.3.99.902, you can get them at http://user.pa.net/~dbblm/xfree.tbz2. Just unpack it in your portage overlay directory, and portage should do all the hard work. Note that this includes the evdev patches only, not the logitech ps/2 ones.

vanjab · Posted: Thu Jan 08, 2004 8:06 am Post subject:

but evdev supports 10 buttons right? i only need logitech ps/2 patches if i dont use xfree? :confused: Either way im going to recompile xfree now, ty

CheshireCat · Guru Joined: 25 Aug 2002 Posts: 572

The evdev patches in xfree86 are sufficient, as long as you're running a kernel w/ the new input layer stuff, like 2.6. You should be fine, you'll just need to adjust your XF86Config file appropriately. Set the "protocol" option for the mouse to "evdev", and you also need to specify either a "Dev Name" or "Dev Phys" option. You can get the correct values for these from /proc/bus/input/devices. If you might unplug the receiver and put it in a different port, you should use the name. Phys specifies the location of the device on the bus, so it won't work if you move the device to another port, but you would need to use it if you have several identical devices. You can use asterisks for for globbing. For example, I have the MX duo, so I have to use both, the keyboard and mouse both have the name "Logitech USB Receiver", the keyboard has phys "*/input0" and the mouse is "*/input1".

Good luck getting yours to work, let me know if you run into trouble.

vanjab · Posted: Thu Jan 08, 2004 10:23 am Post subject:

I also have an MX Duo

I ran into trouble :S
I unzipped untarred that package (bunzip2 <package>, cd /usr/portage, tar -xvf <package>)

and then built xfree (emerge xfree)

it all went well, until it finished, and i left X and edited my config.. only to find that putting "evdev" as my protocol caused an error and had X spit back an error about it. What might be the problem is i didnt do the Dev Phys thing, so ill try that now (i also didnt reboot :S)

Did my patching get messed up, or is this a config problem now?

(also, i use Option "Buttons" "10" in my config now, and xmodmap explicitly asks for the 10th button, so thats a good thing.. unfortunatly they dont get sent as messages yet :/ (xev))

CheshireCat · Guru Joined: 25 Aug 2002 Posts: 572

As long as the xfree86 you installed is 4.3.0-r3 or 4.3.99.902, you should have the patches. If you didn't specify Dev Phys or Dev Name, (or both for Duo), that is the most likely cause of your problem. I wouldn't recommend using the evdev keyboard support just yet, something is a bit goofy there in either the kernel or the XFree86, but you'll still probably need to specify that the mouse is input1.

By the way, do you know about portage's overlay feature? Set PORTDIR_OVERLAY to something in your make.conf (it's probably already in there, set to /usr/local/portage and commented out), and stuff in ${PORTDIR_OVERLAY} will override stuff in the regular portage tree. It's a big help if you're using ebuilds from another source, or developing your own ebuilds, because you don't have to fix them again after emerge sync.

vanjab · Posted: Thu Jan 08, 2004 10:44 am Post subject:

Can the mx700 support 800dpi opperation? I Found that applet and it was market as 'N' (as were all other wireless mice)

My mouse is in PS/2 port btw. I found out i didnt have evdev as part of kernel, im compiling as module now

CheshireCat · Guru Joined: 25 Aug 2002 Posts: 572

It should still work with the PS/2 port, but you might need to move it to USB to get all the buttons to work. I don't know if the kernel can translate all of those buttons to events yet when it's talking PS/2. I also have no clue why the "documentation" with the MX Duo seems to suggest that the USB plugs are only for Macs, and that you should use the PS/2 plugs for PCs.

Regarding the 800dpi operation, I know that the packaging for mine advertised the mouse as 800dpi, but the 800/400 switch feature definitely does not work. It may be 800 only, I'm not really sure how I'd measure the resolution. Also, you probably need the patch I have for logitech_applet, the Duo receiver is identified differently than the plain mx700. I can't find a web site for logitech_applet now, although I did find an email about changing the name to logitech-usb-util, so there may be a new revision out which knows about the Duo.

vanjab · Posted: Thu Jan 08, 2004 11:11 am Post subject:

'logitech_applet' in google turns up a debian mailing list wiht a link to download the file version 0.3

I recompiled my kernel with event support, and I'll change my mouse to USB as soon as i can. At the moment when i run logitech_applet, nothing happens. It just quits out :/

Ill search for the home page of the tool now.

How can i tell that evdev support is properly compiled into XFree? I'm leaning to the fact that i did something wrong there :S Its either that or a PS/2 problem, so ill change the mouse to usb.

CheshireCat · Guru Joined: 25 Aug 2002 Posts: 572

Try this:

vanjab · Posted: Thu Jan 08, 2004 12:49 pm Post subject:

something went wrong in build, it wasnt built in :/
im trying teh portage overlay method right now...

vanjab · Posted: Thu Jan 08, 2004 12:51 pm Post subject:

update: it fails to compile now :/

i extracted the tarball in /usr/local/portage (the overlay dir) then i had to ebuild xfree.ebuild digest,..
now when i try emerge xfree it says "/<overlayportagepath>/site.def, no such file or directory"

any ideas?

CheshireCat · Guru Joined: 25 Aug 2002 Posts: 572

That is odd... which version are you trying to build? It's bedtime for me now, but I may be able to try building it again later and see if I can figure out what the problem is.

vanjab · Posted: Thu Jan 08, 2004 1:34 pm Post subject:

4.3.0-Rx.. is that newest? (thats what emerge xfree defaults to)

vanjab · Posted: Fri Jan 09, 2004 2:16 am Post subject:

*bump*

am i doing something wrong with the emerge?

CheshireCat · Guru Joined: 25 Aug 2002 Posts: 572

Sorry it took me a while, I'm in US/Eastern and work long overnight shifts 3 days a week, so I have odd hours.

I think I've found the problem, there are patches referenced by the original ebuild that I neglected to include in my tarball. I've uploaded a new tarball which has everything I have in my /usr/local/portage/x11-base/xfree, just download it again and unpack to your overlay dir. You should definitely use the full path to the ebuild file, to make sure that portage doesn't select a different version that's not in my tarball.

Did you have any luck locating a newer logitech_applet? If not, go ahead and apply my patch to make it work. All it does is add the MX Duo receiver to the table of supported devices, with the appropriate flags to specify which features are supported.

vanjab · Posted: Fri Jan 09, 2004 3:06 am Post subject:

Nope i didnt find any more logi apps, tried to fiddle with it abit (different users, different permissions etc..) but i still couldnt get it to load. Ill be on my gentoo box soon and installing those patches, as well as trying out USB for mouse. wish me luck

vanjab · Posted: Fri Jan 09, 2004 3:09 am Post subject:

ps is 4.3.99 the newest xfree? or is 4.3.0-Rx newer? emerge xfree defaults to 4.3.0 so i thought it was newest :/

CheshireCat · Guru Joined: 25 Aug 2002 Posts: 572

logitech_applet will only work with USB, but isn't really needed unless you want SmartScroll off (maybe to use all 10 buttons for gaming?).

4.3.99.X is 4.4 pre-release, and is newer than 4.3.0. I've been running 4.3.99.902 for a while now without trouble.

vanjab · Posted: Fri Jan 09, 2004 5:36 am Post subject:

my mouse cant run in usb, it only has a ps/2 port

the keyboard is usb but has an adapter for ps/2

i have xfree working now and evdev recognised, except i cant get the xserver started, i know/think its my config file.

When i start with out a dev phys/name it says it cant latch onto evdev brain or something, and when i set them it says cant initialise core pointer

CheshireCat · Guru Joined: 25 Aug 2002 Posts: 572

You have the Cordless MX Duo, just like mine, right? I'm pretty sure that you can just plug in the one USB plug from the receiver for both the mouse and the keyboard. They appear on my system as one USB device with two interfaces, and everything should "just work" with one USB connection, although I do recall being a bit perplexed by this arrangement when I got it.

Here's what I have in my XF86Config for the mouse:

vanjab · Posted: Fri Jan 09, 2004 6:41 am Post subject:

Does that mean i have to change my Keyboard config as well?

CheshireCat · Guru Joined: 25 Aug 2002 Posts: 572

No, you can use the old keyboard driver if you wish, and I would recommend doing so, because of the problems I've had with the multimedia keys. Most of mine become useless when I switch the keyboard to evdev, and xev doesn't even show keypress events for them, so it's not just a mapping issue.