Console Mouse Support

From ArchWiki

Jump to: navigation, search
Article summary
Installing and enabling the GPM daemon.
Language
English
Italiano
Русский
简体中文
Español

GPM, short for general purpose mouse, is a daemon that provides mouse support for Linux virtual consoles. It is included in most Linux distributions.

Installing

Install gpm with pacman:

# pacman -S 

Configuring

The -m parameter precedes the declaration of the mouse to be used. The -t parameter precedes the type of mouse. To get a list of available types for the -t option, run gpm with -t help.

$ gpm -m /dev/input/mice -t help

If the mouse only has 2 buttons, pass -2 to GPM_ARGS and button-2 will preform the paste function.

The gpm package needs to be started with a few parameters. These parameters can be added in the file /etc/conf.d/gpm or used when running gpm directly.

  • For PS/2 mice, replace the existing line with:
GPM_ARGS="-m /dev/psaux -t ps2"
  • Whereas USB mice should use:
GPM_ARGS="-m /dev/input/mice -t imps2"
  • And IBM Trackpoints need:
GPM_ARGS="-m /dev/input/mice -t ps2"

Once a suitable configuration has been found, adding gpm into the DAEMONS array in /etc/rc.conf will make gpm load at boot. Example:

DAEMONS=(syslog-ng gpm network netfs crond)

For more information see man gpm.

Personal tools