Introduction

This guide describes how to obtain full functionality of the Logitech MX 610. Here, all commands are in fixed-font, like this.

Ubuntu 10.4

You don't need any special setting for the basic functionalities of the mouse (all the buttons should be working just out of the box.) If you upgraded from a previous version of Ubuntu and you have problems with this mouse you should:

1. Unistall Hal if you have it;
2. Make sure that you don't have any udev rule doing anything with your mouse.

With Ubuntu 10.4 you can basically ignore everything written below if you're not interested in getting the led working.

General Mouse

Don't even touch the "ConfiguredMouse" default in /etc/X11/xorg.conf - just add a new input device:

Section "InputDevice"
        Identifier      "MX610"
        Driver          "evdev"
        Option          "Name"  "Logitech USB Receiver"         # see 'cat /proc/bus/input/devices'
        Option          "Phys"  "*/input0"                      # this is the mouse part
        Option          "WHEELRelativeAxisButtons" "4 5"        # vertical wheel
        Option          "HWHEELRelativeAxisButtons" "7 6"       # horizontal wheel
EndSection

Then add it to the devices list:

Section "ServerLayout"
        [...]
        Inputdevice     "MX610" "SendCoreEvents"
EndSection

Using Hal fdi policy

Adding both vertical and horizontal scrolling using hal. No need for xorg.conf editing.

NB! This is for MX620! Users of MX610 should properly substitute mx620 with mx610

Add file: /etc/hal/fdi/policy/mx620.fdi Add content:

<match key="info.product" string="MX620 Laser Cordless Mouse">
 <merge key="input.x11_options.YAxisMapping" type="string">4 5</merge>
 <merge key="input.x11_options.XAxisMapping" type="string">6 7</merge>
</match>

info.product can be optained using the lshal command.

Side buttons

Install xbindkeys and xautomation from universe. Then create ~/.xbindkeysrc with

"xte 'keydown Alt_L' 'key Left' 'keyup Alt_L' &"
   b:8

"xte 'keydown Alt_L' 'key Right' 'keyup Alt_L' &"
   b:9

After starting xbindkeys you can go back and forth with the side-buttons. Then add xbindkeys to ~/.profile.

Volume Keys

No additional software is required to use the volume keys. All you need to do is use "Keyboard Shortcuts." The same can be said for the E-Mail button. By default, they just work in Ubuntu.

Getting the IM button to function is a little bit more interesting...

Notification LEDs and their respective buttons

To get the lights to work for a user, the device must be writable to him/her. To do so, you will need to modify permissions. To do this:

Create the file /etc/udev/rules.d/40-permissions.rules and add

# This file establishes permissions and ownership of devices according
# to Ubuntu policy.  See udev(7) for syntax.
#
# The names of the devices must not be set here, but in 20-names.rules;
# user-friendly symlinks (which need no permissions or ownership) should
# be set in 60-symlinks.rules.

# LED devices
KERNEL=="hiddev*",                      MODE="0666"

You will need to restart udev: /etc/init.d/udev restart. This could cause things to go quirky, so you may want to consider restarting the whole computer altogether.

And since there will be some compiling, make sure the packages autoconf automake build-essential checkinstall are installed. If they aren't, just sudo apt-get install autoconf automake build-essential checkinstall.

E-Mail

Bill Hard, a KDE developer, has been working on the notification LEDs since 3/7/2006. We will use his work.

1. To start, download mx610hack-0.3.tar.gz here.

2. Extract the archive.

3. Replace the depcomp link with the file from here.

4. Open a console and change the working directory to where you extracted the archive using the cd command.

5. Compile using the usual ./configure, make, sudo checkinstall procedure - dont forget to specify the version or it will fail.

To gain an understanding of how to issue commands, issue the command mx610hack --help.

To make use of the light, you can either write a script to execute once you have new mail or install the "mail-notification" package by issuing the command sudo apt-get install mail-notification. Then configure "mail-notification" to your liking and enable the LED on incoming mail with the command mx610hack -p /dev/usb/hiddev0 and disable it when all mail is read with mx610hack -o /dev/usb/hiddev0.

Perhaps someone will write a plugins for Evolution so it just opens the unread mails successively and then toggles it instead of opening Evolution over and over.

IM (for Pidgin users)

It is possible to get Pigin to cooperate with this mouse:

1. Download the plugin source here.

2. Extract the package.
3. Open a console and change the working directory to where you extracted the archive.

4. Install the pidgin-dev package: sudo apt-get install pidgin-dev.

5. Make sure the directory ~/.purple/plugins exists - that's where the plugin is installed.

6. Compile and install: make then make install.

7. Restart Pidgin (if running) and enable the plugin via Tools -> Plugins

8. Change /dev/hiddev0 to /dev/usb/hiddev0

Now not only a new message makes the LED glow, but the button opens the latest message until all are read - then it toggles the buddy list... neat, isn't it?

Acknowledgments

• Bill Hard

• Gaim MX-610 Notification Plugin

• Ubuntu Forums thread about the MX-610 mouse

CategoryHardware