Thursday, October 18, 2007

Using wheel mouse on Ubuntu on VMware

By default, you cannot use wheel of mouse on Ubuntu on VMware.
You should configure /etc/X11/xorg.conf.

First, check your mouse setting in /proc/bus/input/devices.

$ more /proc/bus/input/devices
.
.
I: Bus=0011 Vendor=0002 Product=0005 Version=0000
N: Name="ImPS/2 Generic Wheel Mouse"
P: Phys=isa0060/serio1/input0
S: Sysfs=/class/input/input3
H: Handlers=mouse1 event3 ts1
B: EV=7
B: KEY=70000 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
B: REL=103
Change your mouse "Driver" and "Device" in /etc/X11/xorg.conf
Original:
$ sudo vi /etc/X11/xorg.conf
.
.
Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Configured Mouse"
Driver "mouse"
Option "CorePointer"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
Option "Protocol" "ps/2"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
Option "Emulate3Buttons" "true"
EndSection

Change it like:
Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Configured Mouse"
Driver "evdev"
Option "CorePointer"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/event3"
Option "Protocol" "ps/2"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
Option "Emulate3Buttons" "true"
EndSection
Restart gdm and you can use wheel.
$ sudo /etc/init.d/gdm restart

4 comments:

Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Unknown said...

Actually, simply change the line in the conf file from

Option "Protocol" "PS/2"

to

Option "Protocol" "IMPS/2"

will do the job.

Ben said...

Thank you so much for this post. The popular suggestion of using "ImPS/2" protocol does NOT work for me, but your method does!

(I have a Logitech USB optical mouse, in case others are curious)

tdowg1 said...

Thanks a lot!!
As Ben mentioned, the more popular methods of resolving this issue did not work for me.

I knew it could be done, just didn't know where to put the hack!!!

My situation is unique... I have a an old ball-mouse attached via PS/2 (needed for my KVM switch...) and a USB mouse. The PS2 mouse scroll worked, but the my primary USB mouse's scroll bar did not work!! What a headache.

Thanks again.....