%xboxdrvstuff; ]> 2010-05-05 xboxdrv 1 &xboxdrv_version; &xboxdrv_version; User Commands xboxdrv xboxdrv A Xbox/Xbox360 gamepad driver that works in userspace xboxdrv OPTION -- COMMAND ARGUMENTS xboxdrv is a driver for Xbox and Xbox360 gamepads. It works by reading the raw data from the controller with the userspace library libusb and then passes the interpreted data to the kernel via uinput. This allows xboxdrv to provide regular joystick and event devices, which makes it compatible with all Linux software. Aside from the pure driver, xboxdrv also includes a rich set of configuration options that allow you to tweak the abilities of the virtual input devices that xboxdrv will create. This includes basic button and axis remapping, as well as more complicated things like mouse and keyboard emulation, auto-fire and throttle control emulation. It is also possible for xboxdrv to read input data directly from an event device, this allows the use of the configurability of xboxdrv on regular PC joysticks, keyboards and mice and thus lets xboxdrv serve a similar purpose as joy2key. See the option --evdev below for more information. When a COMMAND is provided xboxdrv will launch that application and be running till that application exits. This is a convenience function to make it easier to use xboxdrv in wrapper scripts. See the section for more information. -h, --help Display help text and exit. -V, --version Print the version number and exit. -v, --verbose Print verbose messages. --debug Print even more verbose messages then --verbose. -s, --silent Do not display controller events on the terminal. For regular use this option should alway be used as output data to the terminal can eat up quite a bit of CPU. --quiet Do not display startup text and suppress most other output. --help-led List possible values for the led. --help-devices List supported devices. --list-supported-devices List supported devices (used by xboxdrv-daemon.py). --list-supported-devices-xpad List supported devices in xpad.c style. --help-abs List all allowed EV_ABS symbols. --help-rel List all allowed EV_REL symbols. --help-key List all allowed EV_KEY symbols. --help-x11keysym List all allowed X11 Keysym symbols. --help-axis List all allowed XboxAxis symbols. --help-button List all allowed XboxButton symbols. --help-all List all symbols that can be used in --ui-buttonmap, --ui-axismap, --buttonmap and --axismap. This option is the same as --help-abs, --help-rel, --help-key, --help-x11keysym, --help-axis and --help-button. -c, --config FILE Reads configuration information from FILE. Configurations from file are handling as if they would be command line options at the position of --config FILE. The syntax of FILE is the familiar INI syntax used for many configuration files. Regular key/value pairs must go into the [xboxdrv] section. '#' and ';' can be used for comments. Key names have for most part the same name as command line options. Command line options that take a list of input mappings (--ui-buttonmap, --ui-axismap, --evdev-absmap, ...) can be split of into their own section for better readability. The examples/ directory contains some example configuration files. --alt-config FILE A shortcut for writing --next-config --config FILE. To load multiple configuration options use: -o, --option NAME=VALUE Set an option as if it would come from a config file from the command line. --write-config FILE Write an example configuration file to FILE. -D, --daemon Run xboxdrv as daemon. If this option is given xboxdrv will listen to udev for USB connection events and launch driver threads for newly connected controllers. Configuration options can still be supplied as usual. Note however that xboxdrv when run as daemon will not create new uinput devices on demand, instead it will only create devices once at startup for the given configurations and then assign new controllers to these configurations. While this means xboxdrv can't support an unlimited number of controllers, it also means that xboxdrv can allow hot plugging even for applications that don't support it themselves, as applications will only see the permanent device files, not the controller that xboxdrv will change around under the hood. An example configuration that supports three controller would look like this: The --match option can be used to limit the controller slots to only those controllers that match the given RULE and thus be used to assign configurations only to specific controllers. --detach Detaches xboxdrv from the current shell, only valid if --daemon is given. --pid-file FILE Write the xboxdrv daemon process id to FILE. --on-connect EXE Launches EXE when a controller gets connected. As arguments "BUSDEV:DEVNUM", "idVendor:idProduct", "NAME are provided. --on-disconnect EXE Launches EXE when a controller gets disconnected. As arguments "BUSDEV:DEVNUM", "idVendor:idProduct", "NAME are provided. -L, --list-controller List available controllers on the system. -i, --id N Use controller with id N (default: 0), use --list-controller to obtain a list of available controller. -w, --wid N Use wireless controller with wid N (default: 0). --device-by-path BUS:DEV Use the controller at BUS:DEV, do not do any automatic scanning. Useful for cases when a controller isn't known by xboxdrv, but supports one of the given protocols. --device-by-id VENDOR:PRODUCT Use device that matches VENDOR:PRODUCT (as returned by lsusb). Useful for cases when a controller isn't known by xboxdrv, but supports one of the given protocols. --type TYPE Ignore autodetection and enforce the controller type. Possible values for TYPE: xbox xbox-mat xbox360 xbox360-wireless xbox360-guitar -d, --detach-kernel-driver Detaches the kernel driver that is currently associated with the given device. This is useful when you have the xpad module loaded and want to use xboxdrv without unloading it. --evdev DEVICE Allows you to read input data from a regular event device. This allows you to use xboxdrv on regular PC joysticks. The data that is read from the event device is converted internally into a XboxMsg object and then passed through the same configuration pipeline as it would be for a regular Xbox360 controller. This allows you to make use of all the regular configurability, but limits you to the number of axis and buttons that an Xbox360 controller provides. As a regular PC joystick will most likely already create a /dev/input/jsX device by itself, you might need to get rid of that so that a game will properly detect the joystick device created by xboxdrv. The easiest way to accomplish that is to simply delete the old joystick and rename the device that xboxdrv created to /dev/input/js0. When you use udev, this operation should be harmless and automatically reverse itself when you remove the controller and plug it back in or when you reboot the computer. --evdev-debug The evdev event handler will print all received events to stdout, this makes it easy to see which events a given controller sends. --evdev-no-grab By default the evdev driver will grab the device, thus making it impossible for other applications to receive events from that device. This is done to avoid confusing applications, as otherwise an app would receive every event twice, once from the original device and once from the virtual xboxdrv one. In some cases this behaviour is undesired, such when mapping only an other wise unhandled subset of keys of an device, i.e. mapping the multimedia keys on a keyboard, so this option turns the grab off. --evdev-absmap ABSMAP,... Sets how evdev events are mapped to Xbox axis events. An example configuration would look like this: --evdev-absmap ABS_X=x1,ABS_Y=y1,ABS_RZ=x2,ABS_THROTTLE=y2,ABS_HAT0X=dpad_x,ABS_HAT0Y=dpad_y xboxdrv will output on startup a full list of event names that the given event device supports and that can be used in place of EVDEV_ABS. It is also possible to map half-axis with a command like: --evdev-absmap ABS_Y+=LT,ABS_Y-=RT This will map the upward movement of the Y axis to the left trigger and the downward movement to the right trigger. --evdev-keymap KEYMAP Sets how evdev events are mapped to Xbox controller events. An example configuration would look like this: --evdev-keymap BTN_TRIGGER=a,BTN_THUMB=b,BTN_THUMB2=x xboxdrv will output on start a full list of event names that the given event device supports. -l, --led NUM Set LED status. Possible values for NUM are: Num Behaviour 0 off1 all blinking2 1/top-left blink, then on3 2/top-right blink, then on4 3/bottom-left blink, then on5 4/bottom-right blink, then on6 1/top-left on7 2/top-right on8 3/bottom-left on9 4/bottom-right on10 rotate11 blink12 blink slower13 rotate with two lights14 blink15 blink once --rumble-gain AMOUNT You can change the rumble strength via: $ xboxdrv --rumble-gain 50% Values larger then 100% are possible as well and will amplify small rumble commands, rumble commands already at the maximum will stay unchanged. -q, --quit Exit xboxdrv after setting LED or rumble values. Chatpad support is still experimental. Basic keyboard usage will work, there is however currently no support for customization or the green and orange key modifiers. Starting xboxdrv multiple times in a row with the --chatpad option can crash the controller. Unplugging it and plugging it back in should reset it. --chatpad Enables the support for the Xbox360 Chatpad. WARNING: This is preliminary code, it will crash your gamepad when xboxdrv is started multiple times and won't provide proper keymapping for any of the umlauts and special characters. --chatpad-no-init This will start chatpad support with out sending the init sequence, thus potentially avoiding crashing the controller if xboxdrv is started multiple times. --chatpad-debug Output raw chatpad data to the stdout for debugging purpose. Xboxdrv does not support the headset, the options below are for developers only and will dump raw headset data, not .wav files. --headset Enable headset support and dump incomming data to stdout. --headset-dump FILE Enable headset support and dump incomming data to FILE. --headset-play FILE Enable headset support and send FILE to the headset for playback. --force-feedback Enables the standard kernel force feedback interface. It is disabled by default as it causes trouble with some applications running in Wine. Since the Xbox360 controller supports just rumble not full force feedback, xboxdrv tries to emulate other effects. This emulation hasn't been tested much and might not always work as expected. Bug reports and test cases are welcome. Note that you must close the application that is using force feedback always before you close the xboxdrv driver, else you might end up with a hanging non-interruptable xboxdrv process that will require a reboot to get rid of. When using xboxdrv in daemon mode with multiple controller slots you have to enable force feedback for each slot separately. -R, --test-rumble Pressing LT will move the left rumble motor and pressing RT will move the right one. Rumble motor strength depends on how hard you press. This is useful for testing the rumble motors. -r, --rumble L,R Set the speed for both rumble motors. Values from 0 to 255 are accepted, the default is 0,0. Controller slots are used when running xboxdrv in daemon mode. Each slot represents a complete controller configuration. If you want to use multiple controller in daemon mode you have to supply multiple controller slots. --controller-slot N Switches to the controller slot with the number N, numbering starts at zero. --next-controller Switches to the next controller slot. --match RULE,... Limits a controller slot to devices that match any one of the given rules. Possible match rules are: usbid=VENDOR:PRODUCT Match controllers that have the given USB vendor and product ids. vendor=VENDOR Match controllers that have the given USB idVendor. product=PRODUCT Match controllers that have the given USB idProduct. property=PROPERTY:VALUE Match against an arbitary udev property, with name PROPERTY and value VALUE. usbpath=BUS:DEV Match against the USB path given by BUS and DEV. usbserial=SERIAL Match against the USB iSerial number. --match-group RULE,... Limits a controller slot to devices that match all of the given rules. Possible match rules are the same as for --match. You can use multple configurations, called config slots, with your controller. You switch between those multiple configurations by pressing the Guide button by default, but you can also set another button via the option --toggle. --config-slot NUM Select the config slot NUM. --next-config Allows the creation of an alternative uinput configuration to which one can toggle at runtime by pressing the ui-toggle button (defaults to guide). The above configuration would install mouse emulation as first configuration and a simple joystick emulation as second configuration. Allowing toggling between mouse emulation and joystick handling by pressing the guide button. Not that --next-config is currently limited to only configurations done with --ui-buttonmap and --ui-axismap, autofire, throttle emulation, deadzones and all other things can currently not be switched at runtime. --toggle XBOXBTN Sets the button that will be used to toggle between different different configurations. --modifier MOD Add a modifier to the modifier stack, see for a full list of possible modifier. --timeout MSEC Specify the number of miliseconds that xboxdrv will wait for events from the controller before moving on and processing things like auto-fire or relative-axis. Default value is 25, smaller values will give you a higher resoultion auto fire, but will waste some more CPU. -b, --buttonmap BUTTON=BUTTON,... Button remapping is available via the --buttonmap option. If you want to swap button A and B start with: $ xboxdrv --buttonmap A=B,B=A If you want all face buttons send out A button events: $ xboxdrv --buttonmap B=A,X=A,Y=A Possible button names are (aliases are in parenthesis): Name Description start, back start, back buttons guide big X-button in the middle (Xbox360 only) a(1), b(2), x(3), y(4) face buttons black, white black, white buttons (Xbox1 only, mapped to lb, rb on Xbox360) lb(5), rb(6) shoulder buttons (Xbox360 only, mapped to black, white on Xbox1) lt(7), rt(8) analog trigger (needs --trigger-as-button option) tl, tr pressing the left or right analog stick du(up), dd(down), dl(left), dr(right) dpad directions (needs --dpad-as-button option) green, red, yellow, blue, orange guitar buttons Just like with --ui-buttonmap you can add button filter to each button. --axismap AXIS=MAPPING,... Axis remapping is available via --axismap and works the same as button mapping. In addition you can supply a sign to indicate that an axis should be inverted. So if you want to invert the y1 axis start with: $ xboxdrv --axismap -Y1=Y1 If you want to swap the left and right stick start with: $ xboxdrv --axismap X2=X1,Y2=Y1,X1=X2,Y1=Y2 Possible axis names are: x1, y1, x2, y2, lt, rt Swaping lt or rt with x1, y1, x2, y2 will not work properly, since their range is different. Just like with --ui-axismap you can add axis filter to each axis. The options in this sections are sortcuts for --modifier. Unlike --modifier they are not order depended, but have a predefined order that is used no matter the order in which the options are given. --autofire BUTTON=FREQUENCY,... Autofire mapping allows you to let a button automatically fire with a given frequency in miliseconds: $ xboxdrv --autofire A=250 Combining --autofire with button map allows you to have one button act as autofire while another one, emitting the same signal, acts normally. $ xboxdrv --autofire B=250 --buttonmap B=A --axis-sensitivty AXIS=SENSITIVITY,... The sensitive of an axis can be adjusted via --axis-sensitivty: $ xboxdrv --axis-sensitivty X1=-1.0,Y1=-1.0 A value of 0 gives you the default linear sensitivity, values larger then 0 will give you higher sensitivity, while values smaller then 0 will give you lower sensitivity. Sensitivity values in the range of [-1, 1] will generally give good results, everything beyond that won't be of much practical use. Sensitivity works by applying: To the value of the axis, this means that both the minimum value and the maximum value of the axis will always stay the same, just the response inbetween changes. For a complete freeform way to change the axis response see the Response Curve Filter. --calibration CALIBRATIONSPEC If your gamepad for some reason can't reach the maximum value or isn't centered properly you can fix that via the calibration options: $ xboxdrv --calibration X2=-32768:0:32767 X2 is the axis name and the three values that follow are min, center and max. Simply insert the values that jstest reports when your axis is in the respective positions. You can also use the calibration option if you want to make your joystick more sensitive. A setting of: xboxdrv --calibration AXIS=MIN:CENTER:MAX,... Will cause the joystick device report maximum position when your stick is only moved half the way. --deadzone NUM The deadzone is the area at which the sticks do not report any events. The default is zero, which gives the best sensitifity but might also cause trouble in some games in that the character or camera might move without moving the stick. To fix this one has to set the value to something higher: $ xboxdrv --deadzone 4000 A value of 4000 works quite well for most games. You can also give the deadzone in percentage: $ xboxdrv --deadzone 15% --deadzone-trigger NUM The left and right trigger have a separate deadzone value which can be specified with: $ xboxdrv --deadzone-trigger 15% --dpad-rotation DEGREE Allows you to rotate the dpad. DEGREE must be a multiple of 45. This can be useful in isometric games where the playfield itself is rotated, thus a: xboxdrv --dpad-rotation 45 Will give you controls that are relative to your character instead of your viewpoint. --four-way-restrictor The --four-way-restrictor option allows to limit the movement on both analogsticks to only four directions (up, down, left, right), the diagonals (up/left, up/right, down/left, down/right) are filtered out from the output. This option is useful for games such as Tetris, that don't need diagonals and where you don't want to accidently trigger the down-move while trying to do a left/right move. --relative-axis AXIS=NUM,... The function --relative-axis allows you to change the behaviour of an axis so that your movement of it moves its value up or down instead of applying it directly. This allows you to simulate throttle control for flightsim games. Since the axis might be upside down, you might want to use the --axismap function to reverse it. $ xboxdrv --relative-axis y2=64000 --axismap -y2=y2 --square-axis The Xbox360 gamepad, as most other current day gamepads, features a circular movement range, which restricts the movement so that the distance to the center never gets beyond 1. This means that when you have the controller at the top/left the value reported is (0.7, 0.7) (i.e. length 1, angle 45) instead of (1,1). This behaviour is different then most classic PC joysticks, which had a square range and would report (1,1) when hold in the top/left corner. Some old games (i.e. mostly DOS stuff) require a square movement range and will not function properly with the Xbox360 gamepad. Via the --square-axis option you can work around this issue and diagonals will be reported as (1,1). The following options are simple shortcuts for common configurations that can be accomplished manually by using --ui-buttonmap and --ui-axismap. --trigger-as-button LT and RT send button instead of axis events --trigger-as-zaxis Combine LT and RT to form a zaxis instead --dpad-as-button The DPad sends button instead of axis events. --dpad-only Both sticks are ignored, only the DPad sends out axis events. Useful for games that might get confused by additional analog axis. Combining this option with --trigger-as-button is recommend in most situations. --guitar Sets a predefined button and axis mapping for use with guitar controllers. This mainly gets rid of a few unnecesary buttons and axis not used by a guitar controller. -m, --mouse Lets the controller act as a mouse. It is indendical to: You can customize it by the usual means, just make sure that --mouse comes before your customization options on the command line. Note that if you have your mouse buttons switched you must adjust the above to match your mouse configuration or the button events will come out wrong. --mimic-xpad Causes xboxdrv to use the same axis and button names as the xpad kernel driver. --no-uinput Do not to start UInput, instead simply read events from the controller, useful for debugging. --no-extra-devices By default xboxdrv will allocate multiple uinput devices and sort events to each of them. Thus mouse related events like BTN_LEFT or REL_X will go to a virtual mouse device, while ABS_X events would go to a virtual joystick device and KEY_ESC would go to a virtual keyboard device. This option disables that automatism and all events will go to the same virtual device. Manual assignment to a specific device (i.e. KEY_ESC@keyboard, BTN_A@joystick, ...) is still possible. --no-extra-events By default xboxdrv will allocate multiple uinput devices and sort events to each of them. Thus mouse related events like BTN_LEFT or REL_X will go to a virtual mouse device, while ABS_X events would go to a virtual joystick device and KEY_ESC would go to a virtual keyboard device. To make sure sure that a mouse, keyboard or joystick device is properly detected by Xorg, the kernel or libraries such SDL xboxdrv will insert extra dummy events. For example a mouse device needs REL_X and REL_Y events to be detected as such, but a configuration that only wants to emulate the mouse buttons won't provide those, thus xboxdrv will add them automatically. The --no-extra-events option will switch this behaviour off. --name NAME Changes the descriptive name the device will have. This options acts the same as --device-name CURRENTSLOT.auto=NAME --device-name TYPE.SLOT=NAME Changes the descriptive name the device will have. TYPE is one of mouse, keyboard, joystick, auto or a number. SLOT is a slot number or auto. The auto name acts as wild card and matches everything. --ui-clear Removes all uinput mappings and will leave the driver in a blank state and only map those things you added yourself. If you only want to get rid of individual buttons you can use the 'void' event. --ui-buttonmap UIBUTTONSPEC,... Allows you to change the event code that is send to the kernel for buttons. The usage is similar to the normal button mapping, except that the right hand side is an event name from /usr/include/linux/input.h. You can use all KEY_ or BTN_ codes for --ui-buttonmap. If the right hand side is left empty all the supplied filters will be added to the already existing button binding instead of a new one. Aside from the named keys, you can also give the input code directly as number via the syntax KEY_#NUM. Instead of the low level KEY_ names, which represent keycodes, you can also use the higher level X11 keysyms XK_, the keysyms have the advantage that they map directly to the key you expect, while a KEY_ name gets mungled by the X11 keymap and will often not report what you expect in case you use a keymap that is different then your keyboard (i.e. dvorak on a qwerty keyboard). A full list of valid X11 keysyms can be optained with --help-x11keysym. For joystick buttons there is in addition to the BTN_JOYSTICK, BTN_X, etc. macros the special name JS_$NUM, which sets the given button to the $NUMS joystick button, i.e.: $ xboxdrv --ui-clear --ui-buttonmap A=JS_0,B=JS_1 Note that this will only work if no other joystick button ids are in the way. You can also map a button to a REL_ event. In that case you can supply additional paramaters in the form of: $ xboxdrv --ui-buttonmap X=REL_???:VALUE:REPEAT VALUE gives the value of the event (default: 10) REPEAT gives the number of milisecond to pass before the event is fired again (default: 5) The special 'void' event allows you to clear any existing bindings for a given button, which can be useful in cases when a game only supports a limited number of buttons. You can also prepend a device_id to the UIBUTTONSPEC which allows you to create multiple uinput devices. By default 'auto' is assumed as device_id which automatically try to do the right thing, sending keyboard events to a keyboard device and mouse events to a mouse device. Other possible values are 'mouse' and 'keyboard'. A device_id of '0' refers to the first joystick device, values larger then 0 to the second, third, etc. Note that the 'mouse' and 'keyboard' device_id names do not give you a mouse or keyboard device, these are just symbolic names for the devices into which xboxdrv will sort events that look like a mouse or keyboard event. The final determination of which device gets handled as what will be done by the Kernel or Xorg depending on what events a device provides. An example configuration makeing use of device_id would look like this: In this example the left stick creates a joystick device and the right stick creates a separate joystick device. When using multiple controller slots you can additionally append the slot id and thus assign events across controller slot boundaries. The syntax for that is: Instead of giving just a single button, it is also possible to give two buttons to --ui-buttonmap to allow shifting: In this example LB acts as shift button, if A is pressed without LB it will send out a JS_0 event, but if LB is pressed it will send a JS_2 event instead. This allows you to multiply the number of available buttons on the controller. See the section KEYBOARD EMULATION below on how to resolve issues with Xorg not detecting the virtual keyboard that xboxdrv creates. You can also apply filters to button events: Hold Button You can send different events depending on how long a button was pressed by: This will send JS_0 events when the button is pressed and switch to JS_1 events when the button was hold for 500 miliseconds. Exec Button You can bind a button to an application, so that the application will be launched when the button was pressed: Macro Button A button can be bound to a macros via: The .macro file has the form of: All abs, rel and key events can be send from a macro file. For documentation on the filters you can apply to events see . --ui-axismap UIAXISSPEC,... Similar to --ui-buttonmap this option allows you to change the event code that is send to the kernel for axes. The events that are available are the same as for --ui-buttonmap. $ xboxdrv --ui-axismap X1=REL_???:VALUE:REPEAT VALUE gives the maximum value of the event (default: 10) REPEAT gives the number of milisecond to pass before the event is fired again (default: 5) $ xboxdrv --ui-axismap X1=KEY_UP:KEY_DOWN:THRESHOLD KEY_UP gives the keycode to be send when the axis is moved up KEY_DOWN gives the keycode to be send when the axis is moved down THRESHOLD gives the threshold that triggers the sending of an event Just like --ui-buttonmap, you can also use shift keys in place of the XBOXAXIS: $ xboxdrv --ui-axismap X1=ABS_X,LB+X1=ABS_RX This allows you to send ABS_X events normally and ABS_RX events when the LB button is held down. For information on how to use axis filters, see . Input filter allow to manipulate the events that come from the controller. They can be used on --buttonmap, --axismap, --ui-buttonmap and --ui-axismap. The difference between the two is that the --ui-... versions applies to the uinput events, while the other version applies to Xbox360 controller events. tog, toggle The toggle filter will turn the button into a toggle button, clicking the button will set it to pressed state and pressing it again will unpress it. Useful for games where you might want to permanently run or duck without holding the button pressed. inv, invert The invert filter will keep the button in pressed state when it is not pressed and in unpressed state when it is pressed. auto, autofire:RATE:DELAY The autofire filter allows to repeatatly send button press events when the button is held down. It takes two optional parameters: RATE is the number of miliseconds between button press events. DELAY the amount of miliseconds till the autofire will start, before that delay the button will act as normal. log:STRING The log filter will output everything to stdout that goes through it to, this is useful for debugging the filter. A STRING can be provided as parameter that will be outputed before the event. cal, calibration:MIN:CENTER:MAX See --calibration. sen, sensitivity:SENSITIVITY See --axis-sensitivity. dead, deadzone:VALUE, deadzone:MIN:CENTER:MAX Deadzone filter applies a deadzone to the current axis. If only MIN is provided, the parameter will be interpreted as -MIN:MIN:1. If the argument is 1, smooth filtering will be applied so that the end of the deadzone is 0. Setting the argument to 0 will apply a simple cut-off filter, where all events smaller then the threshold are ignored. rel, relative:SPEED See --relative-axis. resp, response:VALUES:... The response curve filter allows you to completely change the way an axis reacts. The filter takes a list of VALUES that are then linearly interpolated and spread across the full range of the axis. An example would look like this: Here the X1 axis is manipulated so that it will have a lower sensitivity in the center and a higher one on the outside. log:STRING The log filter will output everything to stdout that goes through it to, this is useful for debugging the filter. A STRING can be provided as parameter that will be outputed before the event. While button and axis filter only apply to a single axis or button at a time, modifiers apply to the complete controller at once and can thus be used to perform modifications that require input from multiple axis or buttons. Most of the modifiers explained below replicate functionality provided by regular options, but allow more fine tuning, such as limiting the effects to a single analog stick instead of just applyig it to all. Note that modifiers are applied one after the other, so order is important. dpad-rotate=DEGREE See --dpad-rotation. 4wayrest, four-way-restrictor=XAXIS:YAXIS See --four-way-restrictor. square, square-axis=XAXIS:YAXIS See --square-axis. rotate=XAXIS:YAXIS:DEGREE:MIRROR Rotates the stick given by XAXIS and YAXIS by DEGREE and optionally MIRRORS it. Plug in your Xbox360 gamepad and then unload the xpad driver via: $ rmmod xpad If you want to permanently unload it add the following line to /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf: blacklist xpad Next you have to load the uinput kernel module which allows userspace programms to create virtual input devices and the joydev module handles the /dev/input/jsX devices: You also have to make sure that you have access rights to /dev/input/uinput, either add yourself to the appropriate group, adjust the permissions or run xboxdrv as root. Once ensured that xpad is out of the way and everything is in place start the userspace driver with: $ xboxdrv Or in case you don't have the neccesary rights (being in group root should often be enough) start the driver as root via: $ sudo xboxdrv This will create /dev/input/js0 and allow you to access the gamepad from any game. To exit the driver press Ctrl-c. By default xboxdrv will echo all controller events to the console, this makes it easy to see if things are properly working, but will eat a lot of CPU, thus it is strongly recomment to disabled that output with the --silent option. The trigger buttons are handled by xboxdrv normally as axis, giving you analog feedback, while this reproduces the Xbox360 controller the most accurately, it will confuse many and only be useful in a few, racing games mainly. So in the majority of cases it is recomment to change the triggers to regular buttons via: $ xboxdrv --trigger-as-button If you want to use multiple wired controllers you need to start multiple instances of the xboxdrv driver and append the -i argument to select the appropriate controller like this: $ xboxdrv -i 1 If you have multiple wireless controller you need to start multiple instances of the xboxdrv driver and append the --wid option like this: $ xboxdrv --wid 1 You have to sync the wireless controller as usual. To see a list of all the controllers that xboxdrv detects being connected to your system use: $ xboxdrv --list-controller To allow hotplugging of gamepads xboxdrv has to be run in daemon mode. This is accomplished with the --daemon option: $ xboxdrv --daemon When launched in daemon mode xboxdrv will listen to udev events and thus be notified whenever a new USB device gets plugged into the computer. It will then match that device against its list of supported devices and launch a separate thread to handle that gamepad. Note that xboxdrv will not allow an arbitarily large number of controllers to be used in that mode, it can only handle as many controllers as you have allocated controller slots at startup. New slots can be allocated with --next-controller and by default one slot is always allocated, thus to support three controller you would run it with: $ xboxdrv --daemon --next-controller --next-controller Each controller slot can be configured individually and you can limit which gamepad gets assigned to which slot with the --match option. Note that xboxdrv will create the virtual uinput devices on startup, not when a gamepad gets plugged in, this allows to plug in gamepads even after a game or an application like XBMC has already been launched and still have it all function properly. In daemon mode xboxdrv can be detached from the current shell via --detach, to get a handle on it to kill it you can write its pid via the --pid-file: $ sudo xboxdrv --daemon --detach --pid-file /var/run/xboxdrv.pid Knowing how to test a xboxdrv configuration is absolutely crucial in understanding what is wrong in a given setup. Testing the configuration in a game is most often not helpful, since you won't see the true cause beyond endless layers of abstraction between you and the actual events. Luckily there are a few tools you can use to test, all of these are command line based and it is recomment that you get familar with them when you want to do any more complex configuration. evtest lets you read raw input events from /dev/input/eventX. The event devices are the very core of all event handling, things like the joystick devices are derived from the event device, so if you want to fix some issue on the joystick device, you have to fix the event device. evtest is available in the tools/ directory or as part of your distribution in the package evtest. your distribution. jstest lets you read the output out of a joystick event device (/dev/input/js0). jstest is available in the tools/ directory or as part of your distribution joystick. sdl-jstest lets you see events as games using SDL see them. This is very important when you want to set and test the SDL_LINUX_JOYSTICK environment variables. It is currently available via: $ svn co svn://svn.berlios.de/windstille/trunk/sdl-jstest Or from the same Ubuntu PPA that also contains xboxdrv in the package sdl-jstest. xev lets you see the events that Xorg sees. Note however that you might not see all events, since some will be grapped by your Window manager before they reach xev, this is normal. xev is part of every Linux distribution, on Ubuntu its available via: $ apt-get install x11-utils Both of these tools lets you calibrate your gamepad, however with pretty much all current gamepads this is no longer needed and actually harmful as it might overwrite a perfectly good working configuration with a broken one (unplugging the gamepad or a reboot will fix that). So avoid them unless you clearly understand the issues of using them. If your gamepad produces incorrect data and you do want to calibrate it you might want to check out the option --calibration, which lets you tweak the way xboxdrv interprets your gamepad data. No tools for testing the output on /dev/input/mouseX are known. If the tools provide no output at all, this might not be due to a wrong configuration, but due to Xorg grabbing your event device and locking it, see Xorg section for possible fixes. By default xboxdrv will handle the trigger as analog axis, not buttons, while this is beneficial for racing games, it will confuse many other games, thus xboxdrv provides an easy way to change the handling into buttons via the --trigger-as-button option: Many gamepads don't center exactly at zero, but at random values around it. This 'noise' can confuse some games and is thus be best filtered out, this can be accomplished with: The percentance is the amount of noise that will get filtered out, you can also give raw device values if you leave out the % sign. If you want to have a deadzone only on a specific axis you have to use axis filter: The following configuration will cause xboxdrv to emulate a keyboard, which can be useful for games that are played with keyboard, like Flash games or games that don't support a joystick. Since different games use different keyboard keys you might have to adjust the keybindings to fit the game: In this configuration the left and right trigger get turned into digital buttons. All axis except the dpad are ignored. RB and RT are mapped to act as if buttons 1,2 and 3 are pressed simultaniously which is useful for some special attacks. Instead of using the native button names, the 1,2,3,... aliases are used, which makes things a little easier to read: In dosbox.conf set: Start xboxdrv with: Your right analog stick will act as trottle control, the trigger as rudder. Using --modifier to install a four-way restrictor might also be worth a consideration to not accidently touch the throttle when the rudder is moved. To use mouse emulation and joystick at the same time you have to register two configuration with xboxdrv, this works via: The --next-config option will open up a second configuration and all configuration options on the right side of it will go there, while everything on the left side of it will go into the first configuration. Toggling between the configurations works with the guide button, you can have as many configuratios as you want. Some games might require more buttons then your gamepad has, in those situation it can be useful to map a button twice by using shifted buttons: Here all face buttons are get mapped three times, once when pressed normally, once when pressed while LB is held down and once when RB is held down, thus given you for the six buttons 12 virtual ones. First analogstick gets mapped te cursor keys, second analogstick gets mapped to mouse. Note: This is just an incomplete example, not a perfectly playable configuration, you have to do tweaking yourself. Note: This is just an incomplete example, not a perfectly playable configuration, you have to do tweaking yourself. When you want full game specific configurability and automatic launching of xboxdrv, it is easiest to write little startup scripts for your games that will launch xboxdrv, launch your game and then when the game is finished tear down xboxdrv: Here your_favorite_game is the executable of your game and is passed to xboxdrv as last argument. This will cause xboxdrv to start the game and keep running as long as the game is running, when the game is done, xboxdrv will quit automatically. If you want to pass parameters to the game you have to add a -- separator, as otherwise your options to the game would be eaten up by xboxdrv. To let SDL know which axis act as a hat and which act as normal axis you have to set an environment variable: You might also need in addition use this (depends on the way SDL was compiled): This will let the DPad act as Hat in SDL based application. For many games the driver will work without this, but especially in Dosbox this variable is very important. If you use options in xboxdrv that change the number of axis you have to adjust the variable accordingly, see: ftp://ptah.lnf.kth.se/pub/misc/sdl-env-vars SDL_LINUX_JOYSTICK Special joystick configuration string for linux. The format is "name numaxes numhats numballs" where name is the name string of the joystick (possibly in single quotes), and the rest are the number of axes, hats and balls respectively. SDL_JOYSTICK_DEVICE Joystick device to use in the linux joystick driver, in addition to the usual: /dev/js*, /dev/input/event*, /dev/input/js* This means that either your controller isn't plugged in or is not recognized by the driver. To fix this you need to know the idVendor and the idProduct numbers, which you can find out via: Once done you can try to add them to this array in src/xpad_device.cpp: If you have success with that, send a patch to grumbel@gmx.de, if not, contact me too, I might be able to provide additional help. As an alternative you can also use the --device and --type option to enforce a USB device as well as a controller type an bypass any auto detection. This means that your controller is sending data that isn't understood by the driver. If your controller still works, you can just ignore it, the Xbox360 controller seems to send out useless data every now and then. If your controller does not work and you get plenty of those lines when you move the sticks or press buttons it means that your controller talks an un-understood protocol and some reverse enginiering is required. Contact grumbel@gmx.de and include the output of: Along with all the "Unknown data" lines you get. Make sure that uinput and joydev kernel modules are loaded. Make sure that you have a /dev/input/uinput, /dev/uinput or /dev/misc/uinput and permissions to access it. Before reporting this as a bug make sure you have tested if the driver itself works with: You have to sync the controller befor it can be used, restart of the driver isn't needed and the driver should let you now when it recieves a connection after you sync the controller. When you try to let xboxdrv send a keyboard events via --ui-buttonmap or --ui-axismap Xorg must register the device as keyboard device to work properly. This seems to work automatically when you bind more then two keyboard keys, if you bind less you need to create the file /etc/hal/fdi/preprobe/xboxdrv.fdi containing: input.keys ]]> This will tell HAL and later Xorg that xboxdrv acts as keyboard. In some older kernels a Wacom graphic tablet creates a joystick device, so xboxdrv or any other real joysticks ends up as /dev/input/js1 instead of /dev/input/js0. In many games this causes the joystick to not function any more. A temporary workaround for this is to simply delete the joystick device js0 and replace it with a symbolic link js1 via: $ sudo ln -sf /dev/input/js1 /dev/input/js0 This workaround will only last till the next reboot, since the device names are dynamically created, but for the time being there doesn't seem to any other way to easily work around this issue. In newer kernels this issue is fixed. On Ubuntu 9.04 the permissions of the uinput device have changed to 0640, meaning only root has access to the device. To change this back so that users in the group root have access the device and in turn can run xboxdrv without sudo you have to create a file called /etc/udev/rules.d/55-permissions-uinput.rules with the content: KERNEL=="uinput", MODE="0660", GROUP="root" When using the Xbox360 gamepad in Wine it is not specially handled as Xbox360 gamepad, but as generic DirectInput gamepad. This means games will not display the proper button labels, but just numbers (i.e. 'Btn1' instead of 'A' for example). Aside from that it should work fine. XInput support (the Microsoft DirectInput replacment, not the Xorg xinput) is as of January 2011 not implemented in Wine, so games that require XInput and don't have an DirectInput fallback will not work with a Xbox360 controller, unofficial patches however do exist. If you start xboxdrv and instead of having a fully working joystick, you end up controlling the mouse that might be due to recent changes in Xorg and its device hotplug handling. There are four workarounds, the one that involves editing /etc/hal/fdi/policy/preferences.fdi is the recommont one. Get the device id from hal: $ hal-find-by-property --key 'info.product' --string 'Xbox Gamepad (userspace driver)' Then remove the device from hal with: $ hal-device -r $DEVICEID Second workaround works with xinput: The former two workarounds are just temporary and have to be redone after each start of xboxdrv, the last workaround is a permanent one: You have to edit: /etc/hal/fdi/policy/preferences.fdi And insert the following lines: ]]> A fourth workaround involved disabling the autodetection of Xorg completly, you can do that by adding the following lines to /etc/X11/xorg.conf: Note that without auto detection you will have to manually configure all your mice and keyboards or your Xorg Server won't start up properly. So unless you are already familiar with editing Xorg you better avoid this workaround. Workaround 3) has basically the same effect, except that auto detection only gets disabled for the single device it is causing problems. For documentation on the FF interface see: http://github.com/github/linux-2.6/blob/f3b8436ad9a8ad36b3c9fa1fe030c7f38e5d3d0b/Documentation/input/ff.txt /usr/include/linux/input.h Additional, non Linux related, force feedback related information can be found at: fftest is an application you can use to test the force feedback interface. Force feedback is disabed by default since it causes trouble in certain application. "Tomb Raider: Legend" for example when run in Wine crashes at startup when rumble is enabled, while it works perfectly normal when rumble is disabled. X11 keysyms might not work correctly in --ui-buttonmap a=XK_Foobar when Foobar is mapped to multiple keycodes in the keymap. Workaround: Use KEY_ instead or cleanup your keymap Newer versions of Xorg will also do perform some auto configuration that might lead to your keymap being switched whenever a new keyboard is detected, in cases of custom Xmodmaps this might confuse xboxdrv and make the XK_ style names unusable. No workaround for that is known right now. Force feedback support is brittle, if you Ctrl-c the driver in the wrong moment you will end up with a dead uninterruptable process and basically have to reboot. This looks like it might be a kernel issue and not a xboxdrv one. Workaround: Kill the app that uses xboxdrv before xboxdrv itself. If you have bug reports or feature request report them by email to: Ingo Ruhnke grumbel@gmx.de Copyright © 2010 Ingo Ruhnke grumbel@gmx.de License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later . This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it. There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law. evtest 1 , jstest 1 , jstest-gtk 1 , xev 1 , fftest 1 , lsusb 1