SPACENAVD(8)

✨ SPACENAVD(8) ✨

okay bestie, gather round, because this is the System Manager's Manual page for spacenavd and spnavd_ctl 💖 and it's literally the glow-up your 3D mouse has been waiting for.

🌸 NAME 🌸

spacenavd, spnavd_ctl — daemon for 3D-input-devices 👑

🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

spacenavd
spnavd_ctl

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

This manual page documents briefly the spacenavd commands. just the highlights, the main-character moments, ykwim?

So here's the tea ☕: the spacenav project provides a free, compatible alternative to the proprietary 3Dconnexion device driver and SDK, for their 3D input devices — you know the ones, they're called “space navigator”, “space pilot”, “space traveller”, etc. iconic naming tbh 🌈

spacenavd is a free software replacement user-space driver (daemon) for 3Dconnexion's space-something 6dof input devices. It's compatible with the original 3dxsrv proprietary daemon provided by 3Dconnexion, and it works perfectly with any program that was written for the 3Dconnexion driver. no cap, it just slots right in 🫶

🚀 Starting

Depending on how your system startup process is set up, it might be the case that the spacenavd daemon starts before the X server (for instance if you don't use a graphical login). In that case the daemon will start properly, but won't connect to the X server until explicitly told to do so 😭

You can do that by running spnavd_ctl x11 start as root, or by using the graphical spnavcfg program.

not me having to do this every single time... you don't really want to have to do that all the time though 💀 so it's a better idea to add the aforementioned spnavd_ctl command to either your ~/.xsession or ~/.xinitrd file, or the system-wide /etc/X11/Xsession file. set it and forget it, periodt ✨

⚙️ Configuration

The spacenavd daemon reads a number of options from the /etc/spnavrc file. If that file doesn't exist, then it uses default values for everything. lowkey forgiving, we love that.

You may use the graphical spnavcfg program to interactively set any of these options. The daemon should respond immediately to your changes, and also the configuration file should be updated automatically. it's giving instant gratification 💅

👑 AUTHOR 👑

spacenavd was written by John Tsiombikas (nuclear@member.fsf.org) 🌟

This manual page was assembled by M G Berberich <berberic@invalid>, for the Debian project (but may be used by others) 🎀

okay that's the whole page bestie, you ate that 💖 go forth and spin things in 3D with main character energy 🌸🦋✨

— with love, from the System Manager's Manual, SPACENAVD(8), dated January 27, 2009 🕰️ (yes she's a vintage queen and she still slays 👑)