Joysticks in Ubuntu

[Andrew Farris]

On Tue, 2009-10-27 at 19:09 -0700, Michael White wrote:
> Is there a frontend application available in Ubuntu to show which
> joysticks you have installed and that can enable them?

Short answer? no

Long answer? there are quite a few in the repos you can download and
try, but they shouldn't be needed.

even longer answer?

I believe once you plug in a joystick, or any other input device, it
simply is auto-configured by X.org and made available for your
applications to use (provided that the device is properly recognized).
If you have a joystick, and it's not working, then you will need to
provide some more information on your joystick, and what you're trying
to accomplish, to get better help.

For some reference, if you want to make sure that your device is being
recognized, do the following:
     1. unplug the device
     2. run "dmesg | tail" in a terminal (this will give you a baseline
        to compare to)
     3. plug the device in
     4. run "dmesg | tail" in a terminal again

you should see some output after plugging it in like this (this is from
doing the above for my joystick): 
        [173929.752731] usb 1-3.1: new low speed USB device using
        ehci_hcd and address 11
        [173929.888044] usb 1-3.1: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
        [173939.900298] input: Logitech Logitech Attack 3
        as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:02.1/usb1/1-3/1-3.1/1-3.1:1.0/input/input14
        [173939.901508] generic-usb 0003:046D:C214.0008: input,hidraw0:
        USB HID v1.10 Joystick [Logitech Logitech Attack 3] on
        usb-0000:00:02.1-3.1/input0

This means that the device was properly recognized, and is ready for
use. if you have any errors, then that could mean you're having
issues...and the above output could be helpful for fixing it.

Hope that helps!


-- 
Andrew
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