Gerardo Zamudio about Linux, open source, and Internet

Xbox 360 Controller on Slackware

07 Feb 2014

Xbox 360 Controller on Slackware

Steam for Linux has been available for a while now and it’s coming along nicely. It’s easy enough to set up for Slackware using Alien Bob’s steamclient packages. Big Picture Mode is available which means more people are going to want to use a gamepad. I have a wired Xbox 360 controller that I purchased to use with my emulators. Slackware’s kernel already includes the xpad gamepad module so the controller is detected as soon as it’s plugged in.

[ 6.513624] usb 2-1.6: new full-speed USB device number 3 using ehci-pci
[ 6.604012] usb 2-1.6: New USB device found, idVendor=045e, idProduct=028e
[ 6.604014] usb 2-1.6: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
[ 6.604016] usb 2-1.6: Product: Controller
[ 6.604017] usb 2-1.6: Manufacturer: ©Microsoft Corporation
[ 6.604018] usb 2-1.6: SerialNumber: 199BF1B
[ 6.870036] input: Microsoft X-Box 360 pad as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.0/usb2/2-1/2-1.6/2-1.6:1.0/input/input10
[ 6.870078] usbcore: registered new interface driver xpad

Make sure the xpad module is loaded:

root@hades:~ # lsmod | grep xpad
xpad                   11426  0

If it’s not, then load it:

root@hades:~ # modprobe xpad

Unfortunately, I had some issues with the gamepad not being recognized by Steam or emulators such as Dolphin.

This can be fixed by creating a udev rule to set the correct permissions for the input device. Stick the rules below in /etc/udev/rules.d/, inside something like 99-joystick.rules:

KERNEL=="event[0-9]*", ENV{ID_BUS}=="?*", ENV{ID_INPUT_JOYSTICK}=="?*", GROUP="games", MODE="0660"
KERNEL=="js[0-9]*", ENV{ID_BUS}=="?*", ENV{ID_INPUT_JOYSTICK}=="?*", GROUP="games", MODE="0664"

Add your user to the games group:

root@hades:~ # usermod -G games -a gerardozamudio

The Xbox 360 controller should now be assigned to the games group with read-write access.

root@hades:~ # ls -l /dev/input/
total 0
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root     180 Feb  7 03:10 by-id/
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root     180 Feb  7 03:10 by-path/
crw-r----- 1 root root  13, 64 Feb  7 09:11 event0
crw-r----- 1 root root  13, 65 Feb  7 09:11 event1
crw-rw---- 1 root games 13, 74 Feb  7 09:11 event10
crw-r----- 1 root root  13, 75 Feb  7 09:11 event11
crw-r----- 1 root root  13, 76 Feb  7 09:11 event12
crw-r----- 1 root root  13, 77 Feb  7 09:11 event13
crw-r----- 1 root root  13, 78 Feb  7 09:11 event14
crw-r----- 1 root root  13, 79 Feb  7 09:11 event15
crw-r----- 1 root root  13, 80 Feb  7 09:11 event16
crw-r----- 1 root root  13, 81 Feb  7 09:11 event17
crw-r----- 1 root root  13, 82 Feb  7 09:11 event18
crw-r----- 1 root root  13, 66 Feb  7 09:11 event2
crw-r----- 1 root root  13, 67 Feb  7 09:11 event3
crw-r----- 1 root root  13, 68 Feb  7 09:11 event4
crw-r----- 1 root root  13, 69 Feb  7 09:11 event5
crw-r----- 1 root root  13, 70 Feb  7 09:11 event6
crw-r----- 1 root root  13, 71 Feb  7 09:11 event7
crw-r----- 1 root root  13, 72 Feb  7 09:11 event8
crw-r----- 1 root root  13, 73 Feb  7 09:11 event9
crw-rw-r-- 1 root games 13,  0 Feb  7 09:11 js0
crw-r----- 1 root root  13, 63 Feb  7 09:11 mice
crw-r----- 1 root root  13, 32 Feb  7 09:11 mouse0
crw-r----- 1 root root  13, 33 Feb  7 09:11 mouse1

This should cause Steam and your emulators to detect the controller properly and allow you to configure it using each application’s settings.

Related Posts