SunOS 5.8 and mouse setup

Hi everybody, hope you're fine :).

I'm coming back to you one more time because I have a problem I can't solve (and spent already a lot of time looking for an answer on the internet).

So, I have a Sun Blade 1500 x64 sparc arch with Sun OS 5.8 installed on it.
I know, SunOS is out of date, but I need that specific OS version because I'm using Cadds software wich needs that version of SunOS.

Everything just works fine with that machine, except for the mouse.

It's a USB mouse with 2 buttons and a wheel.

Left click and right click just work fine, but I can't get the wheel to work (or the middle click).

The problem is, to use Cadds in good conditions, we have to middle click a lot and that does nothing.

Do you know how I can set up the mouse in SunOS 5.8? I looked on the internet, founded lots of man pages, but haven't been able to set it up yet.

Any help is welcome :).

Thanks a lot in advance.

ps : sorry for my bad English, this is not my native language but try my best :wink:

X sees a mouse with two buttons and a scroll wheel as a 5 button device. The scroll wheel is considered to be two buttons. Scrolling in one direction is considered the same as pressing a button multiple times. Likewise in the reverse direction. Additionally, the scroll wheel itself can be pressed like the other conventional buttons.

Try adding the following two lines to the mouse section of your /etc/X11/xorg.conf, i.e.

Section "InputDevice"
   Identifier "Mouse0"
   .....
   Option "Buttons"     "5"
   Option "ZAxisMapping"  "4 5"
   .....
EndSection

AFAIK, Solaris 8 was using Xsun, not Xorg so there was no xorg.conf.

If you are adventurous, there is a Wheel mouse driver for Solaris 8 here, although it seems you would need to compile it from source.

Hi there guys ;).

Thanks a lot for your very quick answers.

@fpmurphy
As jlliagre said, xorg is not installed on that computer, so i'm afraid it won't work. But thanks for your quick help anyway. (if you have any idea on my other issue below :wink: )

@jlliagre
I just had a look at the link you gave me. It seems to be what I'm looking for. But will it work with CDE (Common Desktop Environment) which I have to use for Cadds, because they give a configuration file for openwindow.

Also, in installation instructions, it says I'll have to use kdmconfig to select "USB mouse (Scrollwheel)".

I have already tried to use the "kdmconfig" to set up my keyboard, but all I got is :
kdmconfig: not found

================================

BTW, sorry for asking one more thing, but I haven't been able yet to change my keyboard layout which is by default set to English. I would like to set it up to French. I've already been reading lots of documentation about it, but nothing worked yet. Any idea?

Thanks again for you help

ps : let me know if you need more details on my configuration
ps2 : sorry again for my English :wink:

It should work with CDE. The /etc/openwin/server/etc/OWconfig is the Xsun server configuration file, not the OpenWindows one.

kdmconfig is an x86 only command unavailable on SPARC. USB keyboard layout is expected to be auto-detected by the driver and a dip-switch allows to change the setting. That is at least the case with the Sun keyboards. Unfortunately, most generic/cheap keyboards always advertise an US layout so you need to configure them on the server.

You might use xmodmap to map the keycodes to the correct keys.

# save the current layout
xmodmap -pke > qwerty.map
# make a copy
cp qwerty.map > azerty.map
# fix the layout
vi azerty.map
...
# load the new map (should be done each time the X server is launched)
xmodmap azerty.map
1 Like

OK, thanks again jlliagre for your quick reply.

But, I feel a bit stupid now :(.

When I run "make reallyinstall" as root, the output is "make: not found"

But, when I do it with a standard user, I got :

doing install of 64bit module
cp sun4u/usbsm /platform/sun4u/kernel/drv/`isainfo -n`
cp: cannot access sun4u/usbsm
*** Error code 2
make: Fatal error: Command failed for target `copydrv_64'

Why does the make command works for a user and not for root?

Did I miss something for the installation process?

Sorry, I know my question looks stupid, but I don't get it ;(

Thanks again in advance, and sorry for the assle :frowning:

You need to add /usr/ccs/bin to your PATH when logged under root.

1 Like

Sniff, still having issues ;(

Here is the whole process I did to install that driver.

1 - I've extracted the tar file in my home directory
2 - Go in this directory where files have been extracted
3 - loggin as root
4 - Logout from X (as requested)
5 - Unplug the mouse (as requested)
6 - Log in with the current user as ssh
7 - type su to be root
8 - run command "/usr/ccs/bin/make reallyinstall"

And here is the output I have

/usr/ccs/bin/make reallyinstall
doing install of 64bit module
cp sun4u/usbsm /platform/sun4u/kernel/drv/`isainfo -n`
cp: cannot access sun4u/usbsm
*** Error code 2
make: Fatal error: Command failed for target `copydrv_64'

Any idea on what's going on?

ps : sorry for being an hassle again jlliagre, you definitely deserve a "thanks" for your patience.

Did you compile the driver (make all) ?
You might need to create the sun4u/usbsm directory first.

Oups, my bad, didn't do the "make all" command ;(

So, I've just done it (using a standard user) but got another problem

make all
gcc -m64 -D__sparcv9  -O -Wall -fno-builtin -D_KERNEL  -g -c -o sun4u/usbsm.o usbsm.c
sh: gcc: not found
*** Error code 1
make: Fatal error: Command failed for target `sun4u/usbsm.o'

It seems that gcc is not installed.

Dunno if I'll be able to set up that mouse :(.

That's one of the reasons why I wrote "If you are adventurous" :wink:

You can find a gcc package for Solaris 8 here.

OK, I fully understand why you said that :wink: Can't say I wasn't aware ;).

Any idea which one I should pick?

From my understanding, I would pick this one
GNUgcc.3.4.4 -> SPARC64

Is that correct?

Also, I've just finished modifying the azerty.map (for my keyboard issue). Thanks a lot, it just works perfectly fine.

Just have a little problem with it. Do you know how I can set that azerty.map to start automatically during the boot process?

Because, at the moment, when the computer starts up, at logon screen, it's a qwerty keyboard and only after I type "xmodmap azerty.map" the keyboard goes fr.

Is there a way to get a fr keyboard for the logon screen?

Thanks a lot again for your precious help, you really made my day.
ps : you definitely deserve another thanks

I would pick that compiler too.

I guess you could add the xmodmap command is one of the scripts used by the CDE dtlogin process, but I'm afraid I can't tell which one. I haven't really hacked Solaris 8 since ages ...