Sharkoon Fireglider mouse is wrongly detected as a joystick

[Kazade]

Binary package hint: xserver-xorg-input-evdev

I've been programming a game in SDL and I was surprised that SDL was reporting that 1 joystick was connected when there were none. SDL provides the name as "A4Tech USB Full Speed". "ls /dev/input" shows one joystick connected:

by-id event0 event2 event4 event6 event8 mice mouse1
by-path event1 event3 event5 event7 js0 mouse0

lsusb shows my mouse as:

Bus 003 Device 003: ID 09da:8090 A4 Tech Co., Ltd

Unplugging the mouse makes /dev/input/js0 disappear.
---
Architecture: amd64
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.10
InstallationMedia: elementary 0.2 Jupiter - Release i386
NonfreeKernelModules: fglrx
Package: linux (not installed)
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=en_GB:en
 LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
Tags: maverick
Uname: Linux 2.6.37-02063706-generic x86_64
UnreportableReason: The running kernel is not an Ubuntu kernel
UserGroups: adm admin cdrom dialout lpadmin plugdev sambashare

[Jeremy Foshee (jeremyfoshee)]

Hi Kazade,

Please be sure to confirm this issue exists with the latest development release of Ubuntu. ISO CD images are available from http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/daily/current/ . If the issue remains, please run the following command from a Terminal (Applications->Accessories->Terminal). It will automatically gather and attach updated debug information to this report.

apport-collect -p linux 713556

Also, if you could test the latest upstream kernel available that would be great. It will allow additional upstream developers to examine the issue. Refer to https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KernelMainlineBuilds . Once you've tested the upstream kernel, please remove the 'needs-upstream-testing' tag. This can be done by clicking on the yellow pencil icon next to the tag located at the bottom of the bug description and deleting the 'needs-upstream-testing' text. Please let us know your results.

Thanks in advance.

    [This is an automated message. Apologies if it has reached you inappropriately; please just reply to this message indicating so.]

[Kazade (kazade)]

I've tested with the 2.6.37 kernel from the mainline PPA (I can't try 2.6.38 yet because of FGLRX) and it's definitely still a problem.

[Kazade (kazade)]

If it helps, here is the relevant part of my xorg.0.log

[ 20.692] (II) config/udev: Adding input device A4Tech USB Full Speed (/dev/input/event4)
[ 20.692] (**) A4Tech USB Full Speed: Applying InputClass "evdev pointer catchall"
[ 20.692] (**) A4Tech USB Full Speed: always reports core events
[ 20.692] (**) A4Tech USB Full Speed: Device: "/dev/input/event4"
[ 20.700] (II) A4Tech USB Full Speed: Found 20 mouse buttons
[ 20.700] (II) A4Tech USB Full Speed: Found scroll wheel(s)
[ 20.700] (II) A4Tech USB Full Speed: Found relative axes
[ 20.700] (II) A4Tech USB Full Speed: Found x and y relative axes
[ 20.700] (II) A4Tech USB Full Speed: Configuring as mouse
[ 20.700] (**) A4Tech USB Full Speed: YAxisMapping: buttons 4 and 5
[ 20.700] (**) A4Tech USB Full Speed: EmulateWheelButton: 4, EmulateWheelInertia: 10, EmulateWheelTimeout: 200
[ 20.700] (II) XINPUT: Adding extended input device "A4Tech USB Full Speed" (type: MOUSE)
[ 20.700] (II) A4Tech USB Full Speed: initialized for relative axes.
[ 20.700] (II) config/udev: Adding input device A4Tech USB Full Speed (/dev/input/mouse0)
[ 20.700] (II) No input driver/identifier specified (ignoring)
[ 20.701] (II) config/udev: Adding input device A4Tech USB Full Speed (/dev/input/event5)
[ 20.701] (**) A4Tech USB Full Speed: Applying InputClass "evdev keyboard catchall"
[ 20.701] (**) A4Tech USB Full Speed: always reports core events
[ 20.701] (**) A4Tech USB Full Speed: Device: "/dev/input/event5"
[ 20.735] (II) A4Tech USB Full Speed: Found 1 mouse buttons
[ 20.735] (II) A4Tech USB Full Speed: Found scroll wheel(s)
[ 20.735] (II) A4Tech USB Full Speed: Found relative axes
[ 20.735] (II) A4Tech USB Full Speed: Found absolute axes
[ 20.735] (II) A4Tech USB Full Speed: Found x and y absolute axes
[ 20.735] (II) A4Tech USB Full Speed: Found keys
[ 20.735] (II) A4Tech USB Full Speed: Configuring as mouse
[ 20.735] (II) A4Tech USB Full Speed: Configuring as keyboard
[ 20.735] (**) A4Tech USB Full Speed: YAxisMapping: buttons 4 and 5
[ 20.735] (**) A4Tech USB Full Speed: EmulateWheelButton: 4, EmulateWheelInertia: 10, EmulateWheelTimeout: 200
[ 20.735] (II) XINPUT: Adding extended input device "A4Tech USB Full Speed" (type: KEYBOARD)
[ 20.735] (**) Option "xkb_rules" "evdev"
[ 20.735] (**) Option "xkb_model" "evdev"
[ 20.735] (**) Option "xkb_layout" "gb"
[ 20.735] (EE) A4Tech USB Full Speed: failed to initialize for relative axes.
[ 20.735] (WW) Device 'A4Tech USB Full Speed' has 37 axes, only using first 36.
[ 20.735] (II) A4Tech USB Full Speed: initialized for absolute axes.
[ 20.736] (II) config/udev: Adding input device A4Tech USB Full Speed (/dev/input/js0)

I think this a udev configuration problem.

[Dmitry Zhurikhin (zhurikhin)]

Seems like it's not an udev or X problem - kernel thinks it found a joystick: it has an entry 'js0' in '/sys/class/input'. Moreover it reports two interface descriptors for the device (as seen in attached 'lsusb -v -d 09da:8090' output). One for mouse and another one for ... keyboard. When I tried to look at the events evtest was able to capture for the corresponding to the 'js0' '/dev/input/eventN' device node it showed a long list of key events with different codes (along with joystick events). I was once even able to receive some events by clicking on the mouse whell - and couldn't reproduce it later. So this is probably just another buggy A4Tech device (afaik there are already a couple of quirks in the kernel for their HID devices).

PS: I have an A4Tech X7 mouse but the symptoms are quite the same. It even has the same USB ids.

[Thomas Langkamp (langkamp)]

I can confirm this with the same mouse on 3.16.4 kernel - will there ever be a fix?

[Maarten Peeters (mjpeeter)]

Bug confirmed in Ubuntu 15.04 with kernel 3.19.0

[Maarten Peeters (mjpeeter)]

If this bug is really bothering you, you can apply one of these work-arounds:

1) Remove the input device /dev/input/jsX that is mapped to your mouse (I tested it and confirm it works)

2) Disable the joystick input via xinput (as described on the forums: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1663037) (I didn't test this, but other people seem to have success with it)

3) Add some udev rules as described here: https://gist.github.com/denilsonsa/978f1d842cf5430f57f6 (I tested this and it seems to work)