The 2.6.x Linux Kernel and a PS/2 Mouse

[RoyGBiv]

Okay, I know this is a longshot, but you never know. I've been discussing this issue for weeks in various techie forums, and no one I've encountered has even been able to suggest a possible answer. I know what the basic problem is, in theoretical terms, but I don't know how to solve it. If anyone can even give an educated guess, I would be most appreciative. Pardon the length while I give background and go over what I've done to this point.

My "production" (stable) system is based on SuSE 10.0 with Xorg 6.8. By based on I mean simply that I've upgraded pretty much everything except the kernel, which is 2.6.13-15.10, the "-15.10" meaning it's been customize by the SuSE team, and Xorg. Everything works fine with all my hardware except my video capture, which I could make work, probably, if I chose to take the time. Anyway, my Logitech MX510 mouse works fine too, with a bit of tweaking of the xorg.conf and the appropriate xmodmap command executed when I start KDE.

A couple months ago I started building a Slackware system using a different hard drive, but otherwise the same hardware. I'm using Slackware-current, and the default 2.4.x kernel with Xorg 6.9 works fine with my mouse, no xmodmap command required due to changes in Xorg. The problem started when I upgraded the kernel to 2.6.17. Leaving out a lot of detail of what I did, I was able to get the mouse to work generally. The left and right click works correctly, and I managed to get the scroll wheel to work after a bit of struggle. However, this particular mouse has effectively five other buttons, two on the side that browsers like Firefox use for Forward and Back, the other three attached to functions I never use. However, they are still important because the kernel is interpreting a click of any of these five buttons as the same button, button #2, which should only be one of them. (Right and Left click are 1 and 3, the scroll wheel 4(up) and 5(down).) The side buttons should be 6 and 7, the other three 2, 8, and 9. (I learned this using the xev app.)

I have learned enough to know that the issue is caused by a change in how the kernel detects events using the PS/2++ protocol between 2.4.x and 2.6.x. Originally I thought simply using the kernel version SuSE uses might solve the problem, but such was not the case, and I also tried the same kernel version using Xorg 6.8 as well, thinking the combination might be the problem, which also wasn't the issue. SuSE patches their kernels rather heavily, and I assume one of these patches "fixes" this issue since I do not have a problem in SuSE itself.

Feeling more bravery than intelligence, I also tried just dropping the SuSE kernel into my Slackware system, including the modules, and then tried compiling the SuSE source, but that was a disaster. SuSE changes some other things that make compiling a custom kernel a bit more of a chore than it is with clean kernel source and my own source tree set up from it.

So, the basic question is this: Since I do not know nearly enough about messing with source code, much less device drivers, even to attempt fixes entirely on my own, would anyone have any suggestions on where I might be able to find a kernel patch that would address this? I've gone googley-eyed from searching with Google, and I'm about to give up and just deal with the 2.4.x kernel for the time being. This wouldn't be a problem except that I have been in the process of collecting parts for a new system, and some of those parts rely on the 2.6.x kernel series to work properly.