Scroll-Wheel Copy and Paste

There is no standard ability to copy / cut / paste in the Terminal activity. There are several easy ways to achieve this functionality, though. Three different ways are detailed below:

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1) First method: Create a script (works for pasting, but not for copying): http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Ask_OLPC_a_Question_about_the_Network#Copy_and_Paste_into_Terminal_Window

Open a terminal and create a new file called "paste" in the home directory, this can be done with nano for example.

  nano paste

In the file enter the following

  #!/usr/bin/python
  import pygtk
  import gtk
  cb = gtk.clipboard_get(selection = "PRIMARY")
  print cb.wait_for_text()

Save then make the file executable by typing

  chmod a+x paste

Finally to run the script to paste from the clipboard type

  ./paste

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2) Second method (works for pasting, but not for copying): http://www.catmoran.com/olpc/

In order to map the the middle mouse button onto the trackpad's right button, open Terminal and type:

xmodmap -e "pointer = 1 3 2"

In order to restore the right trackpad button to default: xmodmap -e "pointer = default"

To make the change persist between reboots, go into root then create a file called ".xsession" in /home/olpc

Add the following to the file:

xmodmap -e "pointer = 1 3 2"

In order to paste, simply press the right touchpad button.

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3) Third method (works for both pasting and copying, but requires an external USB mouse):

This requires a USB mouse with a scroll-wheel which is also a third button (common setup).

If you have something in the paste buffer--for instance if you highlighted a command from a web page by highlighting it and copying with Ctrl-C--you can paste it to the command line.

Go to the Terminal, and click the scroll-wheel. It should paste what you have in the paste buffer. Remember that it will always paste it where the current cursor is, the mouse can't move the cursor in Terminal.

To copy something from Terminal, highlight the text. This effectively puts the highlighted text in a paste buffer. You can then paste it back into Terminal, or into another activity (such as Write or a web page text box) by clicking the scroll-wheel.

This is a poor substitute for proper copy-paste ability, but is very useful when trying to do complicated instructions at the command line.