Disable mouse buttons

[Chris Tyler]

On Fri, 2008-11-21 at 10:32 -0600, Bradley wrote:
> Hello, here is a question I'm sure rarely, if ever gets, asked.
> 
> How do I disable some of my mouse's buttons for a specific user?  I have 
> a 4 button mouse plus a scroll wheel (which also acts as another button) 
> and for one user want to disable all (including the scroll wheel) but 
> the left and right buttons.  I am using FC8 with GNOME.
> 
> Reason?  We are trying to teach our son how to use a computer but a lot 
> of the software doesn't distinguish between the left mouse button and 
> some of the others and we want to make it so that if he presses one of 
> the extra buttons nothing will happen.  Any ideas or suggestions?
> 
> This change MUST NOT affect the other user accounts and must be 
> localized to the one user.  Your help is appreciated.
> 
> Bradley

Try:
xmodmap -e "pointer = 1 15 3 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 2"

This will map buttons other than 1 and 3 to high button numbers, which
most applications will ignore. (Note that buttons 4 and 5 are typically
the scroll wheel). You can put it in the ~/.bash_profile

-Chris