Nate's Debian Tips

"Enabling your wheel mouse in XFree

Like most everything else, this isn't too hard provided you get the right information!

XFree treats the wheel as two extra buttons on the mouse, in my case as buttons 4 and 5. My particular wheel mouse is a PS/2 MS clone with two buttons on either side of the wheel. The wheel acts as the third button so 3-button emulation isn't required.

Here is the relevant portion of my /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 file:


# **********************************************************************
# Core Pointer's InputDevice section
# **********************************************************************

Section 'InputDevice'

# Identifier and driver

Identifier 'Mouse1'
Driver 'mouse'
Option 'Protocol' 'IMPS/2'
Option 'Device' '/dev/mouse'
Option 'Buttons' '5'
Option 'ZAxisMapping' '4 5'

EndSection"