Content warning:AI-positive
I had an excellent Claude result today. My computer started acting weird. I poked around a little and wrote this report (abbreviated here) for Claude:
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Interesting problem today. Something has gone wrong with my OS software or maybe hardware. xev says that X is receiving constant events alternating between mouse button 7 down and up. The problem isn't in my actual mouse, which I turned off.
I have two goals. One is to work around the problem enough to investigate. … I want a quick workaround for these—maybe some way to tell X to globally ignore all activity on button 7. Then the larger goal is to figure out what happened and why.
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Claude's response started with this:
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# Find the source first
A button map works per device, so you need the device before you can apply a workaround:
```
sh xinput test-xi2 --root | grep -A2 ButtonPress
```
Each event prints `device: N (M)`. The second number is the source device ID. Look it up in `xinput list`. …
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It went on from there, including the suggestion to disable the device with `xinput disable ID` once I knew the ID.
When I did the `test-xi2` command I learned that the device was called “MOSART Semi. 2.4G Wireless Mouse”. Funny, hadn't I turned that off? … Then a light bulb went on: the problem wasn't in the mouse, it was in the USB dongle.
I pulled out the dongle. The problem went away instantly. When I plugged it back in, the problem didn't come back.
Without the hint about `xinput test-xi2` I wouldn't have gotten there so quickly. I hadn't known about the `xinput` command before, but I'll definitely look into it soon! Unless I'm turned into paper clips first.