How to get side buttons working on mouse in Linux running in VMware player

Question

I have the Razer Deathadder mouse (left handed edition) and some of the buttons don't work on Linux. For example the back and forwards buttons on the side, pressed by the thumb don't work and pressing down on the scroll wheel doesn't do anything. As far as I can tell Razer hasn't come out with software for Linux.

Update: as per Journeyman Geek's recommendation I'm trying to install a third party configuration tool but I'm stuck at the install part

Update 2: as per Dennis' comment I have installed the configuration utility and have copied razer.conf to /etc/razer.conf what is the next step?

I'm using the latest version of Mint Linux. What must I do to get this functionality?

I found a file that gives me a window that looks like it's for setting configuration but none of the options have anything in the list when I click on them

Output of ps ax | grep razer

 1935 ?        S      0:00 /usr/local/sbin/razerd -f -B -P /run/razerd/razerd.pid
 4210 pts/0    S+     0:00 grep --colour=auto razer

I forgot to mention that Linux is running in VMware Player. Here is the output of xinput

Answer 1

In many cases, razer hardware dosen't really do things in a standard way, or needs a little prodding for things to work right. I've not gotten a chance to test it out myself, but there's a FOSS, unofficial driver/configuration tool for razer mice, and regular deathadders seem supported. I suspect the left handed version should work.

If this dosen't work, you can check if these keys actually do something with evtest, then map them with an appropriate tool - It may not be trivial it may need the mouse to get a specific message from the system, as with their keyboards, and this may need some hacking around.

That said, all this is meant for physical systems. You might be able to configure a keyboard shortcut in windows then bind that to something on linux or to passthrough the mouse to the vm, possibly. I tried the former and it worked. The latter resulted in a frozen, unusable mouse. Quite frankly, the question as originally written was entirely plausible. The current scenario, post edit is just not something thats worth the effort.