mouse weirdness sort of solved (was: re: my debian machine)

Matt Graham mhgraham at crow202.org
Fri Aug 27 18:16:56 MST 2021


On 2021-08-27 16:39, Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss wrote:
> Matt Graham via PLUG-discuss said on Thu, 26 Aug 2021 16:44:26 -0700
>> I've partially solved this.  The first button consistently reports a
>> button 9 event.  When button 9 is being held, pushing the second
>> button reports a button 8 event.  Pushing the second button by itself
>> produces a KeyPress event for Shift_L, another for Meta_L, then a
>> KeymapNotify that probably clears the Shift modifier, then KeyRelease
>> events for ISO_Left_Tab and Meta_L.
> That's the craziest nonsense I've ever heard out of a mouse. Is that
> mouse programmable or something? Can I safely assume an ordinary 3
> button mouse does the expected, not the craziness of your mouse?

The left, middle, right, wheel up, and wheel down buttons behave 
exactly the way you would expect from an ordinary IMPS/2 or USB HID 
mouse.  It's only the 2 oddly positioned mystery buttons that do 
semi-strange things.  So finding out what they do and why was never a 
high priority.  The only problems I have ever had with this mouse so far 
have involved cat hair.[0]

> If the 3 button mouse does something crazy, is there a .conf file for
> your mouse? The behavior you report is el-nutzo, meshugana, loco, and
> out of the ordinary.

The mouse is not programmable AFAICT.  It's listed as "1bcf:0005 
Sunplus Innovation Technology Inc. Optical Mouse" in the output from 
lsusb.  Having it emit keyboard events is semi-predictable; a HID can do 
that if it wants.  (Mystery button 2 simulates keyboard events for 
Alt-Tab in an odd way.)  Having buttons 6 and 7 be missing is probably 
explainable by Windows.  ISTR there were at least some mice made that 
had 2 wheels, and the second wheel (probably?) reported up/down as 
buttons 6 and 7.  No idea about the missing button 10, but that's not 
all that important.

[0] Her Fuzziness ( http://crow202.org/2019/mystic_chair8.jpg ) is 
short-haired, but she likes to sit by me, she sheds, and stray cat hairs 
can get between the optical sensor and mouse pad.

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Crow202 Blog: http://crow202.org/wordpress
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But only Light too dim for us to see.


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