Undirected Ramblings

Configuring the Logitech MX 5000 [Permalink]

Wed Jan 18 11:16:10 EST 2006
Category [Linux]

I bought a fancy new Logitech MX5000 the other day, and I thought I'd share my recent success in getting everything working with Linux. The bunndle includes an "MX 5000 keyboard for Bluetooth" and a Bluetooth version of the MX 1000 mouse. I've had the RF version of the MX 1000 working for months now, but the new hardware was just different enough that my old configuration didn't suffice to get everything working correctly. Though both the keyboard and mouse worked out of the box with basic functionality, the fancy buttons and tilt wheel weren't working on the mouse, and it was tracking too fast. I still haven't managed to have them recognized as actual Bluetooth devices (they just show up as USB HID devices), but now all the buttons and tracking are working flawlessly. My old configuration, used with my RF version of the MX1000, didn't recognize the new version of the mouse, yielding errors like "cannot register with evdev brain" in my Xorg log.

The key step in getting everything working was to use the new "evdev" driver, rather than using what appears to have been some sort of hack to include evdev support in older versions of X.org. Here's what my configuration for the RF mouse looked like:

Section "InputDevice"
 Identifier "MX1000"
 Driver     "mouse"
 Option     "CorePointer"
 Option     "Protocol"        "evdev"
 Option     "Dev Name"        "Logitech USB RECEIVER"
 Option     "Buttons"         "12"
 Option     "ZAxisMapping"    "11 12 10 9"
 Option     "Resolution"      "800"
 Option     "Emulate3Buttons" "false"
EndSection

Using the new driver required an upgrade to X.org 6.9.0, after which the configuration looks like this:

Section "InputDevice"
  Identifier    "MX1000"
  Driver        "evdev"
  Option        "CorePointer"
  Option        "Device"        "/dev/input/mx1000"
  Option        "Resolution"      "800"
EndSection

Before we can reference this new /dev/input/mx1000 device, however, we need to make sure that it gets created by udev. I put the following lines in a new file called /etc/udev/rules.d/010_local.rules. It's important that this file be called before any other "event" rules, and that it end with ".rules", so the name is significant. This covers both my RF mouse and the bluetooth version. The bluetooth version needs the extra idProduct specification, as the keyboard and the dongle get registered with the same manufacturer and product name.

KERNEL=="event*", SYSFS{manufacturer}=="Logitech", SYSFS{product}=="Logitech BT Mini-Receiver", \
    SYSFS{idProduct}=="0xc70a", NAME="input/mx1000", mode=="0644"
KERNEL=="event*", SYSFS{manufacturer}=="Logitech", SYSFS{product}=="USB RECEIVER", \
    NAME="input/mx1000", mode=="0644"

On one of my systems, the idProduct value is simply c70a (i.e. without the "0x" at the beginning, so you'll have to poke around in /sys to find out what it says on your system. find /sys -name idProduct|xargs cat should tell you which format it's in on your system.

With these new settings in place, I simply stop and start udev, do the same with Xorg, and everything works perfectly. All the mouse buttons are correctly detected, and vertical and horizontal scroll work flawlessly. To get my thumb buttons working as forward and back buttons in firefox, I added xbindkeys to my .Xclients file (which I've got setup as a startup program in Gnome) and added the following to .xbindkeysrc:

# Backward and Forward buttons
"xvkbd -no-jump-pointer -no-repeat -xsendevent -text "\[Alt_L]\[Left]""
  m:0x10 + b:8
"xvkbd -no-jump-pointer -no-repeat -xsendevent -text "\[Alt_L]\[Right]""
  m:0x10 + b:9

I was getting repeated events, where a single click would back or forward up until it hit the end of history (very annoying) until I found a suggestion to add the -no-jump-pointer -no-repeat -xsendevent part to the configuration I had before. Now the buttons seem to work perfectly. I love the ability to navigate around websites just by clicking the buttons on my mouse. It's friendly to my wrists!

In conclusion, the Logitech MX 1000 is a fabulous mouse. It tracks remarkably well, feels good in my hand, and has buttons in the right places that really make a difference in my everyday computing experience. I've gotten so used to it that I had to buy a second mouse to use at home (I had been using the first only at work), because I just couldn't live without my tilt wheel and back and forward buttons. My only complaint about the hardware is that Logitech doesn't currently sell the Bluetooth version of the MX 1000 without a keyboard (in the MX 5000 bundle), which I don't use (although it makes my girlfriend happy to have a keyboard she can type on...I can't live without my Kinesis Advantage). With just a few steps, the mouse is easy to setup in Linux and X.org, and every feature of the mouse works perfectly. Kudos to the X.org developers who have made this configuration so much easier over the years!