The Mouse Movement Tracker is a lightweight C program designed to monitor the relative motion of a mouse on Linux-based systems. It calculates the x and y offsets from a starting point and continuously displays these values in the terminal. This tool can be useful for various applications like testing mouse accuracy, user behavior studies, or just as an educational tool to understand mouse inputs in Linux.
- Real-time Tracking: The program provides instant feedback on mouse movements, updating the display as the mouse moves.
- Low Overhead: Written in C, the software has a minimal footprint and runs efficiently on most systems.
- Terminal-Based: The tool runs entirely within the terminal, making it portable and easy to use on any Linux system.
Ensure you have gcc installed to compile the software. Navigate to the root directory of the project using a terminal and compile the program:
gcc src/main.c -o bin/main
Running the Program
After compilation, run the program using:
sudo ./bin/main
Making the Script Executable
If you encounter permission-related issues when attempting to run the run_mouse_position.sh script, it may be necessary to make the script executable. You can do this using the chmod command as follows:
chmod +x run_mouse_position.sh
Monitoring Mouse Position
To continuously monitor the mouse's relative position, you can use the provided run_mouse_position.sh script. This script runs the program in a loop and updates the mouse position. To run the script, use:
./run_mouse_position.sh
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🛡️Root Access: This software requires root permissions to access the mouse device file. If you encounter permission-related issues when running the program, you may need to provide the necessary permissions or run the program with superuser privileges. Always exercise caution when running any program as root. Malicious or erroneous operations can lead to system-wide damages.
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⏹️Graceful Termination: Ensure to handle the program termination gracefully, such as by using Ctrl+C. This ensures that system resources are freed, and there are no lingering processes.
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⚡Unpredictable Results: Reading directly from system device files can occasionally lead to unexpected results due to system configurations, concurrent operations, or other factors. It's advisable to use this tool in controlled environments, and always ensure you have backups of important data.
This software is provided under the MIT License.
Orkun Acar
If you have any questions or encounter issues, feel free to open an issue.
Enjoy monitoring your mouse's relative movements on Linux!