moused.8

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.\"	Mike Pritchard <mpp@FreeBSD.org>.  All rights reserved.
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.Dd June 3, 2018
.Dt MOUSED 8
.Os
.Sh NAME
.Nm moused
.Nd pass mouse data to the console driver
.Sh SYNOPSIS
.Nm
.Op Fl acdf
.Op Fl I Ar file
.Op Fl VH Op Fl U Ar distance Fl L Ar distance
.Op Fl A Ar exp Ns Op , Ns Ar offset
.Op Fl a Ar X Ns Op , Ns Ar Y
.Op Fl C Ar threshold
.Op Fl m Ar N=M
.Op Fl w Ar N
.Op Fl z Ar target
.Op Fl 3 Op Fl E Ar timeout
.Op Fl T Ar distance Ns Op , Ns Ar time Ns Op , Ns Ar after
.Fl p Ar port
.Pp
.Nm
.Op Fl d
.Fl p Ar port
.Fl i Ar info
.Sh DESCRIPTION
The
.Nm
utility and the console driver work together to support
mouse operation in the text console and user programs.
They virtualize the mouse and provide user programs with mouse data
in the standard format
(see
.Xr sysmouse 4 ) .
.Pp
The mouse daemon listens to the specified port for mouse data,
interprets and then passes it via ioctls to the console driver.
The mouse daemon
reports translation movement, button press/release
events and movement of the roller or the wheel if available.
The roller/wheel movement is reported as
.Dq Z
axis movement.
.Pp
The console driver will display the mouse pointer on the screen
and provide cut and paste functions if the mouse pointer is enabled
in the virtual console via
.Xr vidcontrol 1 .
If
.Xr sysmouse 4
is opened by the user program, the console driver also passes the mouse
data to the device so that the user program will see it.
.Pp
If the mouse daemon receives the signal
.Dv SIGHUP ,
it will reopen the mouse port and reinitialize itself.
Useful if
the mouse is attached/detached while the system is suspended.
.Pp
If the mouse daemon receives the signal
.Dv SIGUSR1 ,
it will stop passing mouse events.
Sending the signal
.Dv SIGUSR1
again will resume passing mouse events.
Useful if your typing on a laptop is
interrupted by accidentally touching the mouse pad.
.Pp
The following options are available:
.Bl -tag -width indent
.It Fl 3
Emulate the third (middle) button for 2-button mice.
It is emulated
by pressing the left and right physical buttons simultaneously.
.It Fl C Ar threshold
Set double click speed as the maximum interval in msec between button clicks.
Without this option, the default value of 500 msec will be assumed.
This option will have effect only on the cut and paste operations
in the text mode console.
The user program which is reading mouse data
via
.Xr sysmouse 4
will not be affected.
.It Fl E Ar timeout
When the third button emulation is enabled
(see above),
the
.Nm
utility waits
.Ar timeout
msec at most before deciding whether two buttons are being pressed
simultaneously.
The default timeout is 100 msec.
.It Fl L Ar distance
When
.Dq Virtual Scrolling
is enabled, the
.Fl L
option can be used to set the
.Ar distance
(in pixels) that the mouse must move before a scroll event
is generated.  This effectively controls the scrolling speed.
The default
.Ar distance
is 2 pixels.
.It Fl H
Enable
.Dq Horizontal Virtual Scrolling .
With this option set, holding the middle mouse
button down will cause motion to be interpreted as
horizontal scrolling.
Use the
.Fl U
option to set the distance the mouse must move before the scrolling mode is
activated and the
.Fl L
option to set the scrolling speed.
This option may be used with or without the
.Fl V
option.
.It Fl I Ar file
Write the process id of the
.Nm
utility in the specified file.
Without this option, the process id will be stored in
.Pa /var/run/moused.pid .
.It Fl T Ar distance Ns Op , Ns Ar time Ns Op , Ns Ar after
Terminate drift.
Use this option if mouse pointer slowly wanders when mouse is not moved.
Movements up to
.Ar distance
(for example 4) pixels (X+Y) in
.Ar time
msec (default 500) are ignored, except during
.Ar after
msec (default 4000) since last real mouse movement.
.It Fl V
Enable
.Dq Virtual Scrolling .
With this option set, holding the middle mouse
button down will cause motion to be interpreted as scrolling.
Use the
.Fl U
option to set the distance the mouse must move before the scrolling mode is
activated and the
.Fl L
option to set the scrolling speed.
.It Fl U Ar distance
When
.Dq Virtual Scrolling
is enabled, the
.Fl U
option can be used to set the
.Ar distance
(in pixels) that the mouse must move before the scrolling
mode is activated.
The default
.Ar distance
is 3 pixels.
.It Fl A Ar exp Ns Op , Ns Ar offset
Apply exponential (dynamic) acceleration to mouse movements:
the faster you move the mouse, the more it will be accelerated.
That means that small mouse movements are not accelerated,
so they are still very accurate, while a faster movement will
drive the pointer quickly across the screen.
.Pp
The
.Ar exp
value specifies the exponent, which is basically
the amount of acceleration.  Useful values are in the
range 1.1 to 2.0, but it depends on your mouse hardware
and your personal preference.  A value of 1.0 means no
exponential acceleration.  A value of 2.0 means squared
acceleration (i.e. if you move the mouse twice as fast,
the pointer will move four times as fast on the screen).
Values beyond 2.0 are possible but not recommended.
A good value to start is probably 1.5.
.Pp
The optional
.Ar offset
value specifies the distance at which the acceleration
begins.  The default is 1.0, which means that the
acceleration is applied to movements larger than one unit.
If you specify a larger value, it takes more speed for
the acceleration to kick in, i.e. the speed range for
small and accurate movements is wider.
Usually the default should be sufficient, but if you're
not satisfied with the behaviour, try a value of 2.0.
.Pp
Note that the
.Fl A
option interacts badly with the X server's own acceleration,
which doesn't work very well anyway.  Therefore it is
recommended to switch it off if necessary:
.Dq xset m 1 .
.It Fl a Ar X Ns Op , Ns Ar Y
Accelerate or decelerate the mouse input.
This is a linear acceleration only.
Values less than 1.0 slow down movement, values greater than 1.0 speed it
up.
Specifying only one value sets the acceleration for both axes.
.Pp
You can use the
.Fl a
and
.Fl A
options at the same time to have the combined effect
of linear and exponential acceleration.
.It Fl d
Enable debugging messages.
.It Fl f
Do not become a daemon and instead run as a foreground process.
Useful for testing and debugging.
.It Fl g
Become the sole recipient of all incoming input events.
This prevents other processes from getting input events on the device.
.It Fl i Ar info
Print specified information and quit.
Available pieces of
information are:
.Pp
.Bl -tag -compact -width modelxxx
.It Ar port
Port (device file) name, i.e.\&
.Pa /dev/cuau0 ,
.Pa /dev/ums0
and
.Pa /dev/psm0 .
.It Ar type
Protocol type.
It is one of the types listed under the
.Fl t
option below or
.Ar sysmouse
if the driver supports the
.Ar sysmouse
data format standard.
.It Ar model
Mouse model.
.It Ar all
All of the above items.
Print port, type and model in this order
in one line.
.El
.Pp
If the
.Nm
utility cannot determine the requested information, it prints
.Dq Li unknown
or
.Dq Li generic .
.It Fl m Ar N=M
Assign the physical button
.Ar M
to the logical button
.Ar N .
You may specify as many instances of this option as you like.
More than one physical button may be assigned to a logical button at the
same time.
In this case the logical button will be down,
if either of the assigned physical buttons is held down.
Do not put space around
.Ql = .
.It Fl p Ar port
Use
.Ar port
to communicate with the mouse.
.It Fl q Ar config
Path to configuration file.
.It Fl Q Ar quirks
Path to quirks directory.
.It Fl w Ar N
Make the physical button
.Ar N
act as the wheel mode button.
While this button is pressed, X and Y axis movement is reported to be zero
and the Y axis movement is mapped to Z axis.
You may further map the Z axis movement to virtual buttons by the
.Fl z
option below.
.It Fl z Ar target
Map Z axis (roller/wheel) movement to another axis or to virtual buttons.
Valid
.Ar target
maybe:
.Bl -tag -compact -width x__
.It Ar x
.It Ar y
X or Y axis movement will be reported when the Z axis movement is detected.
.It Ar N
Report down events for the virtual buttons
.Ar N
and
.Ar N+1
respectively when negative and positive Z axis movement
is detected.
There do not need to be physical buttons
.Ar N
and
.Ar N+1 .
Note that mapping to logical buttons is carried out after mapping
from the Z axis movement to the virtual buttons is done.
.It Ar N1 N2
Report down events for the virtual buttons
.Ar N1
and
.Ar N2
respectively when negative and positive Z axis movement
is detected.
.It Ar N1 N2 N3 N4
This is useful for the mouse with two wheels of which
the second wheel is used to generate horizontal scroll action,
and for the mouse which has a knob or a stick which can detect
the horizontal force applied by the user.
.Pp
The motion of the second wheel will be mapped to the buttons
.Ar N3 ,
for the negative direction, and
.Ar N4 ,
for the positive direction.
If the buttons
.Ar N3
and
.Ar N4
actually exist in this mouse, their actions will not be detected.
.Pp
Note that horizontal movement or second roller/wheel movement may not
always be detected,
because there appears to be no accepted standard as to how it is encoded.
.Pp
Note also that some mice think left is the negative horizontal direction;
others may think otherwise.
Moreover, there are some mice whose two wheels are both mounted vertically,
and the direction of the second vertical wheel does not match the
first one.
.El
.El
.Ss Configuring Mouse Daemon
The first thing you need to know is the interface type
of the mouse you are going to use.
It can be determined by looking at the connector of the mouse.
The serial mouse has a D-Sub female 9- or 25-pin connector.
The bus and InPort mice have either a D-Sub male 9-pin connector
or a round DIN 9-pin connector.
The PS/2 mouse is equipped with a small, round DIN 6-pin connector.
Some mice come with adapters with which the connector can
be converted to another.
If you are to use such an adapter,
remember the connector at the very end of the mouse/adapter pair is
what matters.
The USB mouse has a flat rectangular connector.
.Pp
The next thing to decide is a port to use for the given interface.
The PS/2 mouse is always at
.Pa /dev/psm0 .
There may be more than one serial port to which the serial
mouse can be attached.
Many people often assign the first, built-in
serial port
.Pa /dev/cuau0
to the mouse.
You can attach multiple USB mice to your system or to your USB hub.
They are accessible as
.Pa /dev/ums0 , /dev/ums1 ,
and so on.
.Pp
You may want to create a symbolic link
.Pa /dev/mouse
pointing to the real port to which the mouse is connected, so that you
can easily distinguish which is your
.Dq mouse
port later.
.Pp
The next step is to guess the appropriate protocol type for the mouse.
The
.Nm
utility may be able to automatically determine the protocol type.
Run the
.Nm
utility with the
.Fl i
option and see what it says.
If the command can identify
the protocol type, no further investigation is necessary on your part.
You may start the daemon without explicitly specifying a protocol type
(see
.Sx EXAMPLES ) .
.Pp
The command may print
.Ar sysmouse
if the mouse driver supports this protocol type.
.Pp
Note that the
.Dv type
and
.Dv model
printed by the
.Fl i
option do not necessarily match the product name of the pointing device
in question, but they may give the name of the device with which it is
compatible.
.Pp
If the
.Fl i
option yields nothing, you need to specify a protocol type to the
.Nm
utility by the
.Fl t
option.
You have to make a guess and try.
There is rule of thumb:
.Pp
.Bl -enum -compact -width 1.X
.It
The
.Ar ps/2
protocol should always be specified for the PS/2 mouse
regardless of the brand of the mouse.
.It
You must specify the
.Ar auto
protocol for the USB mouse.
.It
Most 2-button serial mice support the
.Ar microsoft
protocol.
.It
3-button serial mice may work with the
.Ar mousesystems
protocol.
If it does not, it may work with the
.Ar microsoft
protocol although
the third (middle) button will not function.
3-button serial mice may also work with the
.Ar mouseman
protocol under which the third button may function as expected.
.It
3-button serial mice may have a small switch to choose between
.Dq MS
and
.Dq PC ,
or
.Dq 2
and
.Dq 3 .
.Dq MS
or
.Dq 2
usually mean the
.Ar microsoft
protocol.
.Dq PC
or
.Dq 3
will choose the
.Ar mousesystems
protocol.
.It
If the mouse has a roller or a wheel, it may be compatible with the
.Ar intellimouse
protocol.
.El
.Pp
To test if the selected protocol type is correct for the given mouse,
enable the mouse pointer in the current virtual console,
.Pp
.Dl "vidcontrol -m on"
.Pp
start the mouse daemon in the foreground mode,
.Pp
.Dl "moused -f -p <selected_port> -t <selected_protocol>"
.Pp
and see if the mouse pointer travels correctly
according to the mouse movement.
Then try cut & paste features by
clicking the left, right and middle buttons.
Type ^C to stop
the command.
.Ss Multiple Mice
As many instances of the mouse daemon as the number of mice attached to
the system may be run simultaneously; one
instance for each mouse.
This is useful if the user wants to use the built-in PS/2 pointing device
of a laptop computer while on the road, but wants to use a serial
mouse when s/he attaches the system to the docking station in the office.
Run two mouse daemons and tell the application program
(such as the
.Tn "X\ Window System" )
to use
.Xr sysmouse 4 ,
then the application program will always see mouse data from either mouse.
When the serial mouse is not attached, the corresponding mouse daemon
will not detect any movement or button state change and the application
program will only see mouse data coming from the daemon for the
PS/2 mouse.
In contrast when both mice are attached and both of them
are moved at the same time in this configuration,
the mouse pointer will travel across the screen just as if movement of
the mice is combined all together.
.Sh FILES
.Bl -tag -width /dev/consolectl -compact
.It Pa /dev/consolectl
device to control the console
.It Pa /dev/psm%d
PS/2 mouse driver
.It Pa /dev/sysmouse
virtualized mouse driver
.It Pa /dev/ttyv%d
virtual consoles
.It Pa /dev/ums%d
USB mouse driver
.It Pa /var/run/moused.pid
process id of the currently running
.Nm
utility
.It Pa /var/run/MouseRemote
UNIX-domain stream socket for X10 MouseRemote events
.El
.Sh EXAMPLES
.Dl "moused -p /dev/cuau0 -i type"
.Pp
Let the
.Nm
utility determine the protocol type of the mouse at the serial port
.Pa /dev/cuau0 .
If successful, the command will print the type, otherwise it will say
.Dq Li unknown .
.Bd -literal -offset indent
moused -p /dev/cuau0
vidcontrol -m on
.Ed
.Pp
If the
.Nm
utility is able to identify the protocol type of the mouse at the specified
port automatically, you can start the daemon without the
.Fl t
option and enable the mouse pointer in the text console as above.
.Bd -literal -offset indent
moused -p /dev/mouse -t microsoft
vidcontrol -m on
.Ed
.Pp
Start the mouse daemon on the serial port
.Pa /dev/mouse .
The protocol type
.Ar microsoft
is explicitly specified by the
.Fl t
option.
.Pp
.Dl "moused -p /dev/mouse -m 1=3 -m 3=1"
.Pp
Assign the physical button 3 (right button) to the logical button 1
(logical left) and the physical button 1 (left) to the logical
button 3 (logical right).
This will effectively swap the left and right buttons.
.Pp
.Dl "moused -p /dev/mouse -t intellimouse -z 4"
.Pp
Report negative Z axis movement (i.e., mouse wheel) as the button 4 pressed
and positive Z axis movement (i.e., mouse wheel) as the button 5 pressed.
.Pp
If you add
.Pp
.Dl "ALL ALL = NOPASSWD: /usr/bin/killall -USR1 moused"
.Pp
to your
.Pa /usr/local/etc/sudoers
file, and bind
.Pp
.Dl "killall -USR1 moused"
.Pp
to a key in your window manager, you can suspend mouse events on your laptop if
you keep brushing over the mouse pad while typing.
.Sh SEE ALSO
.Xr kill 1 ,
.Xr vidcontrol 1 ,
.Xr xset 1 ,
.Xr keyboard 4 ,
.Xr psm 4 ,
.Xr screen 4 ,
.Xr sysmouse 4 ,
.Xr ums 4
.Sh STANDARDS
The
.Nm
utility partially supports
.Dq Plug and Play External COM Device Specification
in order to support PnP serial mice.
However, due to various degrees of conformance to the specification by
existing serial mice, it does not strictly follow the version 1.0 of the
standard.
Even with this less strict approach,
it may not always determine an appropriate protocol type
for the given serial mouse.
.Sh HISTORY
The
.Nm
utility first appeared in
.Fx 2.2 .
.Sh AUTHORS
.An -nosplit
The
.Nm
utility was written by
.An Michael Smith Aq Mt msmith@FreeBSD.org .
This manual page was written by
.An Mike Pritchard Aq Mt mpp@FreeBSD.org .
The command and manual page have since been updated by
.An Kazutaka Yokota Aq Mt yokota@FreeBSD.org .
.Sh CAVEATS
Many pad devices behave as if the first (left) button were pressed if
the user
.Dq taps
the surface of the pad.
In contrast, some ALPS GlidePoint and Interlink VersaPad models
treat the tapping action
as fourth button events.
Use the option
.Dq Fl m Li 1=4
for these models
to obtain the same effect as the other pad devices.
.Pp
Cut and paste functions in the virtual console assume that there
are three buttons on the mouse.
The logical button 1 (logical left) selects a region of text in the
console and copies it to the cut buffer.
The logical button 3 (logical right) extends the selected region.
The logical button 2 (logical middle) pastes the selected text
at the text cursor position.
If the mouse has only two buttons, the middle, `paste' button
is not available.
To obtain the paste function, use the
.Fl 3
option to emulate the middle button, or use the
.Fl m
option to assign the physical right button to the logical middle button:
.Dq Fl m Li 2=3 .