This one’s a quick-and-dirty one, folks. Just got myself a new mouse recently and was tired of the “back” and “forward” thumb-buttons not working in Firefox under Ubuntu 5.04. For those of you in a similar predicament, edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf and replace the appropriate “InputDevice” with the new configuration as shown below.

First, we’ll make a backup copy of the X.org configuration file… just in case:

sudo cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.bak

Now, we need to know the where the device is located:

cat /proc/bus/input/devices | grep -A1 "Logitech USB Receiver"

You’ll need the information following P: Phys= to replace the appropriate section in the configuration. Now open /etc/X11/xorg.conf with your favorite text editor and replace the default mouse’s “InputDevice” section with the following:


Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Logitech MX1000"
Driver "mouse"
Option "Protocol" "evdev"
Option "Dev Name" "Logitech USB Receiver"
Option "Dev Phys" "usb-0000:00:02.0-4/input0"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
Option "Buttons" "12"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
Option "Resolution" "800"
Option "CorePointer"
EndSection


Save the changes and restart the X server with a good, old-fashioned three-finger salute, Linux style: CTRL-ALT-BACKSPACE. When X comes back up, log in and test the buttons, they should work. For those of you that use any of the other buttons: tough luck, you’ll have to figure out the rest on your own.