Arch Linux

yatohese

Member

Registered: 2010-10-30

Posts: 18

Erratic Middle Mouse Button

Hello,

quite some time I'm experiencing problems with my middle mouse button. (I'm using a Logitech Bluetooth Mouse.)
Now it started to _really_ bug me and I realized I need help

The problem is as follows:
If I want to open a new Firefox tab and press the mouse wheel (aka middle mouse button) it usually does nothing. Then I start to press the button multiple times and finally it works. But sometimes, it works on first try. It is usually the same with pasting. (And sometimes it pastes it twice, even if I click only once.)

Where might be the root of this behavior?
(My touchpad works correctly.)

Thanks!

wudu

Member

Registered: 2010-03-08

Posts: 83

Re: Erratic Middle Mouse Button

Hi, sounds like a damaged mouse button. Have had same behavior on my old mouse with button 1.

You could emulate the middle button by adding this

Option         "Emulate3Buttons" "yes"

to the mouse section of  your /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Simultaneous pressing left and right muse button then emulates the middle button.

Last edited by wudu (2011-02-10 13:29:33)

yatohese

Member

Registered: 2010-10-30

Posts: 18

Re: Erratic Middle Mouse Button

Is there a way to check if it is indeed broken? Like a tool which runs always in the background and shows me, if I press the mouse button?

wudu

Member

Registered: 2010-03-08

Posts: 83

Re: Erratic Middle Mouse Button

Yes there is.
With xev you get a little window where you can click on and see the resulting events in your console window.
It shows pressing and releasing events.

It should be installed already, I think it comes with xorg.

Last edited by wudu (2011-02-10 13:53:57)

flan_suse

Member

Registered: 2010-10-28

Posts: 120

Re: Erratic Middle Mouse Button

I'll second what wudu says. This doesn't sound like a software issue. You can even try using the same mouse on another PC or on an Ubuntu LiveCD and see if it still acts the same way. My guess is that it will.

Even brand new mice sometimes have poor middle mouse button designs. I have a problem with my middle mouse button: It requires me to really press down on it, and sometimes it will start scrolling down pages if I'm not careful. This is a brand new mouse!

Last edited by flan_suse (2011-02-10 17:21:35)