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I have a Cyborg R.A.T.3 mouse with two side buttons. In Windows, by default, those side buttons work as the "Back" and "Forward" buttons in apps like Firefox, Chrome, Explorer, etc.

How do I do the same for Ubuntu?

My xorg.conf entry for the R.A.T.3 looks like this:

# RAT3 mouse
Section "InputClass"
  Identifier "Mouse Remap"
  MatchProduct "Saitek Cyborg R.A.T.3 Mouse"
  MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*"
  Option "ButtonMapping" "1 2 3 4 5 0 0 8 9 0 0 0 13 14"
EndSection

...with the "Back" and "Forward" buttons on my mouse being 8 and 9 respectively.

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If you open a terminal and run xinput list, can you see your mouse? If yes, can you run xinput test ID, where ID is the number you found from xinput list? Which button numbers are reported for your Back and Forward buttons? As far as I know, the numbers should be 8 and 9. You can reassign the numbers with xinput --set-button-map. – elmicha Dec 12 '11 at 16:47
Hi elmicha. That is indeed the case. The two side buttons are assigned to 8 and 9. However, this does not help with then assigning those buttons to "Back" and "Forward" in Firefox, nautilus, etc. I have no doubt it's possible, but I just don't know how to do it :) – thecosmicfrog Dec 12 '11 at 17:18
I also just added the R.A.T.3 entry from my xorg.conf to the original question. – thecosmicfrog Dec 12 '11 at 17:22
If you can see the buttons 8 and 9 with xinput test ID, Firefox and Chromium should work with them out of the box, IMHO. I tried it with two VMs that are rather fresh (unconfigured), one Natty and one Oneiric, and the buttons work there, too. What Ubuntu version do you use? – elmicha Dec 12 '11 at 19:11
Somewhat strangely it has started to work. Possibly a result of rebooting. Thanks for your help elmicha. I wouldn't have known about xinput test otherwise! – thecosmicfrog Dec 18 '11 at 18:05
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closed as too localized by Bruno Pereira♦ Feb 29 '12 at 9:19

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