How To Enable Mouse Wheel Scrolling in Ubuntu Hardy on VMware Fusion

by Peter Cooper on April 26, 2008

I was having problems installing VMware Tools on Ubuntu Hardy (8.04) under VMware Fusion but got to the bottom of it.

The next problem was trying to get the mouse scroll wheel to work. I did some Googling and most of the guides suggested I change a single line in xorg.conf (namely, set the "Protocol" of the mouse device to "ImPS/2"). It didn't work. On a limb I thought I'd try changing the driver from "vmmouse" to "mouse" and this solved the problem, but the mouse tracking and acceleration was TOTALLY different between OS X and Linux.. eugh!

With some perseverance, I've found a solution. You can use the vmmouse driver, keep the synchronized mouse tracking and acceleration, and use your mouse wheel as it was intended.

I have been told this technique works on VMware Workstation and VMware Player on the PC too, but I haven't tried it on there myself.

Steps to Enable Mouse Wheel Scrolling in Ubuntu Hardy under VMware Fusion

Launch a Terminal (Applications menu -> Accessories -> Terminal).

Type:

sudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Scroll down (it's not far, perhaps 20 - 30 lines) till you see a block that looks like this:

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Configured Mouse"
Driver "vmmouse"
[.. blah blah blah ..]
EndSection

Replace that whole section with this:

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Configured Mouse"
Driver "vmmouse"
Option "CorePointer"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
Option "Protocol" "ImPS/2"
Option "Buttons" "5"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection

Save the file, then close all your apps and hit Ctrl+Alt+Backspace. X restarts within a few seconds, and you're back up and running. Scrolling should now be possible!

I haven't gotten to the bottom of horizontal scrolling yet. I thought a ZAxisMapping of "4 5 11 12" would do it, but I suspect either VMware Fusion's mouse driver does things a different way, or maybe it's mouse specific (not likely). I'll update this post if I work it out.

{ 8 trackbacks }

Enable Mouse Wheel Scrolling in Ubuntu Hardy 8.04 Under VMWare | The Number 42
April 30, 2008 at 4:25 am
Ubuntu Mighty Mouse Scroll Wheel | iTechster
May 23, 2008 at 8:22 pm
things & stuff » Blog Archive » Mouse Scroll Wheel in Ubuntu in VMware
June 20, 2008 at 12:04 am
Not So Wise
August 6, 2008 at 8:10 am
Настройка интерфейса Ubuntu на VMWare Server | Computer Experiments Exposed
October 8, 2008 at 10:52 am
Christina’s Notes » Blog Archive » Oo also.
November 7, 2008 at 9:06 pm
CSastra’s Blog » Blog Archive » Enable Scroll Mouse Pada Ubuntu
December 4, 2008 at 5:54 am
Ubuntu in VMware Fusion « LEMP test
January 9, 2009 at 3:12 am

{ 133 comments }

1 Gabriel September 30, 2008 at 7:15 pm

Great ! works like a charm

2 Anon October 1, 2008 at 7:29 pm

Thanks mate, works with Ubuntu Hardy on VMWare Workstation 6.0.4

3 Billiga October 4, 2008 at 3:16 pm

Thanks for the explanation Peter, much appreciated! Was years since I dabbled with the X11 config file.. first time ever I didn't break it :P

4 Mike Carpentier October 13, 2008 at 9:35 pm

Thanks so much! Works like a charm!

Cheers --Mike

5 sot October 19, 2008 at 4:55 pm

Many thanks, this worked with VMWare Player in XP sp3.

My dvd rw isn't recognized by ubuntu 8.04.1(but my usb flash is) in vmware player. Is this a thing with vmware player or it happens just to me. The same problem had appeared when I was playing with Tinyme. My fstab line for cd is:
/dev/scd0 /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,noauto,exec,utf8 0 0

6 Gabe October 24, 2008 at 8:01 am

Thanks that rocks.

7 Daimon Cladinos October 25, 2008 at 9:44 am

Way Too Cool! This worked for me!

Thank you for taking the time to post this!

Vista x64; VMWare Player Build 2.5.0; Ubuntu 8.04

8 Pierre Labrie October 25, 2008 at 10:25 pm

Works well with VmWare Fusion on Mac.

9 Cyber October 26, 2008 at 5:51 pm

Thx so much! It works perfectly! ;)

10 BT October 29, 2008 at 3:40 am

Thanks worked exactly as advertised

VMworkstation6.X, Ubuntu (Hardy)

11 taekwon October 29, 2008 at 7:05 am

It works well.. Thanks!!

12 Alain October 30, 2008 at 3:54 pm

Excelent!!!

It worked for mee too. I have Ubuntu 8.04 as a guest OS over VMWare Player 2.04 with Windoz XP OS as host OS. The VM was created with VMWare Workstation 6.X.

13 Ramesh Marikhu November 5, 2008 at 9:35 pm

When I replaced the "InputDevice" part of xorg.conf with the section below, -
----
Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Configured Mouse"
Driver "vmmouse"
Option "CorePointer"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
Option "Protocol" "ImPS/2"
Option "Buttons" "5"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection
----
the mouse scrolling did work. However, ubuntu I had installed in VMWare Workstation 6 could not identify my display and provided me with only 800x600 screen resolution. I checked out the contents of xorg.conf and found that it was auto-replaced with the content below -
----
Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Configured Mouse"
Driver "mouse"
Option "CorePointer"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
Option "Protocol" "ImPS/2"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
Option "Emulate3Buttons" "true"
EndSection
----
In order to get back 1024x768 screen resolution, I changed the line
Option "Protocol" "ImPS/2"
to
Option "Protocol" "ps/2"
But after that, the mouse scrolling did not work. Please help.

14 DrTune November 14, 2008 at 4:56 am

AAARGH! HELP! It didn't work and totally screwed up my computer... no... wait a minute... that was Vista. :-)
Nah, works. Thx!

15 Longboard November 23, 2008 at 6:51 am

LOL
Congratulations
This little tip is all over the web
I must remember to save this a text file
I keep coming back.
Nice.

16 ferhatkdz December 1, 2008 at 3:55 pm

thanks.
(kUbuntu 8.04,vmware 6.05)

17 Mykola Lys December 7, 2008 at 9:51 pm

cool! it works on my WM Fusion. Host id Mac OS X Leopard 10.5.2(Hackintosh) with A4tech X7 mouse on Ubuntu 8.04 jars.de image.
tahnks a lot! looks problem in vmware tools driver then.

18 Nick December 8, 2008 at 2:56 pm

Astonishing! Works a treat on VMWare! Thanks!

19 Anand Rai December 9, 2008 at 12:10 pm

thanks for info.
it works on vmvare station for ubuntu...
:)

20 fevm December 30, 2008 at 12:59 pm

Thanks.
Works in Ubuntu 8.04 // VMWare WOrkstation ace edition. 6.0...

21 Zach January 10, 2009 at 12:53 am

Works like a charm. I will say that in doing this in VMware Workstation 5.5.3 or 5.5.8 or 6.5, that the scrolling seems to hesitate unless you scroll VERY slowly. It's probably that VMware just doesn't like my Microsoft wireless laser mouse 6000 v2 :)

22 Leo January 12, 2009 at 5:55 pm

Thanks a lot. It worked for me as well. (Ubuntu 8.04)

23 Rob January 19, 2009 at 6:38 am

Works on Intrepid perfectly as well, and with a weird mouse, too!
Thanks!

24 none January 21, 2009 at 9:23 pm

THANKS!

25 juan January 22, 2009 at 10:47 am

thanks for the tip...

26 Justin January 27, 2009 at 12:29 am

Sweet! Thx

27 onn January 28, 2009 at 9:27 am

Thanks 4 the tips... its work 4 me on vmware workstation 5.0.0

28 harryz February 21, 2009 at 10:48 am

you are realy great
thx a lot

29 Hubert February 28, 2009 at 3:02 pm

Thanks a lot!

30 Swiss March 5, 2009 at 3:46 pm

Works for me on ESX Server 3.5 and Ubuntu 8.1

31 Sigurdur F March 8, 2009 at 7:54 pm

Simply thanks! This saved me couple of hours of digging.

32 Johnny March 9, 2009 at 2:01 pm

Thanks mang, this was driving me ****ing nuts, glad to have found a fix. It's amazing how relient on the scroll wheel I've become since the 90's. :D

33 James Bonas March 10, 2009 at 1:24 pm

Brilliant, thanks :)

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