Skip to main content

Setting up the Marble Mouse for Ubuntu

I have a Logitech trackball which I love. I bought it when my wrists started hurting after hours of long Photoshop sessions. The switch to the trackball fixed all that. It allows me to hold my hand in the perfect position and it's great for most browsing with one exception:

It lacks a middle-click wheel.


This presents a bigger problem than it seems, as design seems to be removing the scroll bars at the edges of windows in favor of small slits. So to get around this you can emulate a scroll wheel or use the middle click to activate a scroll motion on various programs. Logitech has a utility that sets this up in Windows but in Ubuntu you have a better (if more hard-work required) option. The Ubuntu option is better because unlike in Windows you can emulate the wheel with the track-ball by holding down a button. This is the option I like to use.

In Ubuntu you write a configuration file to set up the trackball to work the way you want it. I have to re-create this configuration file every-time I upgrade Ubuntu, so I made a Ruby script that will do this for me.

I haven't figured out a way to get a Ruby script to function with root privileges yet. But here is the script I use and it works well using sudo and it prompts you for the password when needed.

[BTW Ubuntu turns 7 years old, today! Which means I've been using it for 6... wow, time flies!]

[Edit: I've added the file to my Github page for easier downloading. March 5, 2012]

#!/usr/bin/env ruby
#Creates a variable text with the content of the configuration file
text = <<ENDofTEXT
SSection "InputClass"
  Identifier      "Marble Mouse"
  MatchProduct    "Logitech USB Trackball"
  MatchIsPointer  "on"
  MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*"
  Driver          "evdev"
  Option "ButtonMapping"       "1 8 3 4 5 6 7 2 9"
  Option "EmulateWheel"        "true"
  Option "EmulateWheelButton"  "8"
  Option "YAxisMapping"        "4 5"
  Option "XAxisMapping"        "6 7"
  Option "Emulate3Buttons" "true"
EndSection
ENDofTEXT
#finds where the directory for the file is
zombie =  `locate xorg.conf.d | grep d$`
zombie.chomp!
#writes the file to the temp directory
f = File.new("/tmp/50-marblemouse.conf", "w")
f.puts text
f.close
#copies the file to the correct directory (unless it exists already) using sudo privileges.
puts `sudo cp /tmp/50-marblemouse.conf #{zombie}/50-marblemouse.conf` unless FileTest.exists?(zombie + "/50-marblemouse.conf")
Labels:

Comments

  1. bigzaquiNovember 19, 2011 at 10:30 AM

    thanks for sharing this, I was having the same problem

    ReplyDelete
  2. TimmehOctober 4, 2014 at 8:28 AM

    This is excellent, thanks, though doesn't seem to quite have the desired config in the latest ubuntu? The two small buttons on the mouse now do navigate forwards and backwards (NB: I have used the latest file provided on your githhub account and tried two of the three configs there (the first too). Any help appreciated!

    ReplyDelete
  3. TimmehOctober 4, 2014 at 8:56 AM

    Sorry was just being dim - hadn't restarted. Thanks!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Contrasting Styles of Writing: English vs. Spanish

There is interestingly enough a big difference between what's considered good writing in Spanish and English . V.S. Naipul winner of the 2001 Nobel prize for literature publish an article on writing . In it he emphasizes the use of short clear sentences and encourages the lack of adjectives and adverbs. Essentially he pushes the writer to abandon florid language and master spartan communication . This is a desired feature of English prose , where short clipped sentences are the norm and seamlessly flow into a paragraph. In English prose the paragraph is the unit the writer cares about the most. This is not the case in Spanish where whole short stories (I'm thinking this was Gabriel Garcia Marquez but maybe it was Cortázar) are written in one sentence. Something so difficult to do in English that the expert translator could best manage to encapsulate the tale in two sentences. The florid language is what is considered good writing in Spani...
3 comments
Read more

Building my own home.

I've decided. I want to build my own home. There is something special about building your own things. I built a desk for my tiny room when I first moved to L.A. My room was so small that I had to sit on the bed to use the computer so I build a high desk so I could sit on the bed and work on the computer. My roommate Trentity helped me cut the ply-wood to the right side. I still have that desk. It now sits on the living room covered by a cloth hiding the surplus of costume parts my current roommate Sean uses in his creations. Learning to build and fix things continue. And the feeling of satisfaction from fixing even small things is great. So a few years ago I heard on the NPR program the Story about a couple of educators that moved to a tent in their back-yard so they could rent their house and afford to send their kids to college. They had a special type of tent called a yurt and cooked and showered in an RV they had parked next to it. I thought I could do that. Housing in Lo...
2 comments
Read more

My Fake Resume

Inspired by the over aggrandized bio of Joseph Rakofsky I want to write my own. If you don't know who he is; Joseph Rakofsky is a lawyer who earned a mistrial for a criminal client due to his (alleged) incompetence as reported on the Washington Post . There has been quite a few commentaries on his "Streisand-house" approach of suing all the bloggers and even the Washington Post and American Bar Association for reporting his (alleged) ineptitude. ("Streisand-house" is what happened to Barbara Streisand who wanted to have a picture of her mansion removed from the internet and she sued to have it removed. Unfortunately suing requires the filing of public documents with a picture of her house. The lawsuit had the direct opposite effect it intended. Everybody now could see legally, since it was a public document, a picture of her house.) But all that internet gossip aside I'm most impressed by his resume. Here is a quote from the website: Prior t...
1 comment
Read more