imwheel: Using Your Scroll Mouse in Linux
by Tammy Fox
Last Modified: Wednesday, 19-May-2004 11:55:34 EDT
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Introduction
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imwheel is a program that allows you to scroll in most applications with your scroll mouse. It is started as a process after starting X Windows. Note: imwheel 0.9.8 and below have a security hole and must be patched. This only affects those have the SUID bit turned on for imwheel. See below for instructions on patching. Also note, this will not work if you have turned on the emuulate 3 buttons feature. If Emulate3Buttons is activated, the scroll mouse will not work and X Windows will probably freeze.
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imwheel Installation
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RPM Version
This version from RedHat has the security patch included.
- Download from RedHat PowerTools
rpm -ivh imwheel-0.9.8-1.i386.rpm
- Follow the post-installation instructions to configure your X Windows mouse settings.
TAR Version
- Download from imwheel website
tar -xvzf imwheel-0.9.8.tar.gz
- Download security patch from imwheel website
gunzip imwheel-0.9.8-security.patch.gz
- Copy util.c into a directory called
imwheel-0.9.8-old as written in the security patch file
- Modify second and third lines to match the directories your two
util.c files are in. Note: to use the -p0 switch of patch, you must give it the full path to the files.
- Apply patch with command
patch -p0 < imwheel-0.9.8-security.patch
cd imwheel-0.9.8
./configure
make
make install
- Follow the post-installation instructions to configure your X Windows mouse settings.
Post-installation
- Make sure
Emulate3Buttons is NOT activated. This is configured in your XF86Config file. The # mark is used for commenting. Your configuration file should look like this:
# Emulate3Buttons
# Emulate3Timeout 50
- In your
XF86Config file make sure you are using the IMPS/2 protocol for a PS/2 mouse or IntelliMouse for a serial mouse.
- You must have the line
ZAxisMapping 4 5 under the Pointer Section of the X Windows configuration file. In other words, your XF86Config file should look like this under the Section "Pointer":
Section "Pointer"
Protocol "IMPS/2"
Device "dev/mouse"
ZAxisMapping 4 5
- Restart X Windows if you had to modify your configuration file.
- Start X Windows with the
startx command.
- As root, run
imwheel after X Windows is started or follow the
advanced instructions to run imwheel automatically when X is started.
Advanced Configuration
Each time imwheel is started, it appends the file
/tmp/imwheel.pid with the current process id (pid). However, it
must have the proper permissions to write to this file. The owner of the file
is the user who first starts imwheel and creates the file. Thus,
if root is the first user to start imwheel then
/tmp/imwheel.pid will be owned by root and by default no one else
can write to the file. You can work around this a few ways. If you are the
only user on the system, change the owner of the file to your user and make sure
you have read and write permissions to it. Root will also have permission to
write to this file if you need to run it as root. If there is more than one
user on the system you want to give access to imwheel, change the
permissions to the /tmp/imwheel.pid file where everyone can write
to the file. You can get even more complex and define a group of imwheel users
and change the group permissions of the file to read and write.
The installation of imwheel should have created the script
/etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc.d/imwheel. Every script in the
/etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc.d is executed when X starts. Thus, this
script and with the proper permissions to the /tmp/imwheel.pid your
scroll mouse should work automatically each time X is started, and you will not
have to execute imwheel as root each time you start X.
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Where to Download
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Last modified: Wednesday, May 19, 2004
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