3

the previous/next buttons of my dell mouse do not work on ubuntu 17.10. Other buttons are working fine.

According to documentation, I tried to perform button remapping using xinput list and then xinput test #device-number

Here is the ouput of xinput list:

ben@precision ~ $ xinput list
⎡ Virtual core pointer                      id=2    [master pointer  (3)]
⎜   ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer                id=4    [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ xwayland-pointer:14                       id=6    [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ xwayland-relative-pointer:14              id=7    [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎣ Virtual core keyboard                     id=3    [master keyboard (2)]
    ↳ Virtual core XTEST keyboard               id=5    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ xwayland-keyboard:14                      id=8    [slave  keyboard (3)]

I tried to run xinput test 2,xinput test 4, etc... and then click mouse buttons to identify my device number but this has no effect, nothing printed to the output.

How can I identify my mouse device and then perform lateral buttons mapping?

1 Answer 1

2

Your mouse is probably id=6 on that list. It ought to work with xinput test 6 or xinput test xwayland-pointer:14. On my machine, this only works when the mouse is over the root window (i.e., over the desktop, not over an application window).

On my Dell mouse, the previous/next buttons are 8 and 9 instead of 6 and 7. I can fix this with xinput --set-button-map <dev num> 1 2 3 4 5 8 9 (with <dev num> the id number in the output of xinput --list, i.e., 6).

Also, your system is now running its events through wayland, which is hiding the actual devices from you. That is why you see the xwayland-pointer, etc, instead of the actual device names. I have not yet sorted this out, but I think installing libinput-tools and using libinput debug-events is the preferred way to go. However, I can't find a way to fix this other than xinput.

1
  • You explanation of how to use xinput test worked for me. You could improve the command like this: xinput test 6 | grep button. I also have a Dell mouse, previous/next buttons are 8 and 9, but they don't work. How did you make them work? Mar 13, 2018 at 0:29

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .