Logitech Control Center Bug

As cool as the Mighty Mouse is, it just is not acceptable as a gaming mouse. I’ve used several different Logitech devices over the years and I’ve always been happy with them: Marble FX, MX-1000, VX Revolution, and now the MX Revolution. I was very disappointed when I first got my VX Revolution and could not get the Logitech Control Center to work with Mac OS X. Sure, the basic features work (click, scroll) but you can’t use the extra buttons or customize behavior. There are other products such as SteerMouse and USBOverDrive that provide similar function, but that’s beside the point .. Logitech’s own software should work with their hardware.

I finally decided to dig into the issue today and discovered some clues about why it may not work. One forum post suggested that renaming the hard drive to a name without a space might fix the problem (it did for them), but that did nothing for me. That got me thinking that the installer may not be copying files to the right place or at all due to bad path names in the installer. Lo and behold, when I checked the kernel extensions directory, the kext for the Logitech driver *was not there*. Oops.

I dug through the installer package and located the kext, copied it manually and loaded the module .. and a little gray OSD pops up instantly with “Logitech Control Center – MX Revolution Cordless Mouse Connected”. Here’s a quick run-down on the process:

NOTE: This involves moving files into SYSTEM AREAS of your Mac. Putting files in the wrong place or deleting files could render your system useless. Proceed at your own risk.

1. Download the LCC installer. Instead of double-clicking, right-click and click on “Show Package Contents”.
2. Browse to Contents -> Resources and you should see “Logitech Control Center.pkg”. Right-click and click on “Show Package Contents.
3. Again, browse to Contents -> Resources and you will see “LogitechHIDDevices-XX.kext” where XX is ISO, JPN, or US.
4. Command-click on your Mac HD to open a new Finder window and browse to System -> Library -> Extensions
5. Drag the LogitechHIDDevices-XX.kext that matches your language into the Extensions directory. You may need to authenticate to do this.
6. After the kext is copied into the directory, right-click the LogitechHIDDevices-XX.kext and click “Get Info”
7. Under Ownership & Permissions -> Details, change the Owner to “system” and the group to “wheel”. You may have to click the padlock and authenticate to do this.
8. Reboot and it should find your mouse now.
   1. For the impatient who are not afraid of the command line, you can open a terminal and use the kextload command to force the module to load.
9. E-mail Logitech and tell them about your harrowing experience with moving system files around to make their silly software work :)

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