8.10: mouse buttons not working

[R Kimber]

Since upgrading to 8.10 the mouse buttons on my Logitech wireless mouse
no longer work properly (i.e. as they did before the upgrade).

The reason seems to be that the mouse section of xorg.conf has been
commented out because the mouse is now handled by HAL.

However, I cannot find any user-friendly documentation that explains
how I may configure mouse buttons using HAL.  Can anyone tell me how it
works, or point me to some straightforward documentation? There isn't a
man page for HAL, and I couldn't see anything relevant
in /usr/share/doc/hal/examples/ or .../hal-info. Nor is there an option
in System->Preferences->Mouse.  

http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/hal has some information,
including a technical specification, but it is not user-oriented (and
the FAQ has "Answer welcome" to a question about mounting a device!)

Basically, I want to configure what I assume is button 4 so that it
pastes from the clipboard (left, right and middle buttons all work OK).
(This is not a trvial need, I use this *all the time*, and the middle
button is not accurate enough for general use because a slight
infelicitous finger movement when working under pressure causes the page
to scroll and the insert is then pasted in the wrong place.)

Thanks.

-- 
Richard Kimber
http://www.psr.keele.ac.uk/