To access a Space Navigator (or compatible) device in Linux, you need to run a daemon in the background. The official 3dconnexion drivers provide such a server, but the open source spacenav project provides a vastly superior daemon that I highly recommend.
spacenavd can communicate input events with client software using either the X11-based protocol supported by the 3dconnexion drivers, or a local UNIX socket-based protocol. The libspnav client library, also produced by the spacenav project, can use either protocol.
If you are using Ubuntu 11.04, you can install spacenavd and libspnav with the following command:
sudo apt-get install spacenavd libspnav0
Otherwise, you will need to download the sofware from:
and install it manually.
The spnav Python module can installed from PyPI with the command:
sudo easy_install spnav
or installed from source by running the usual Python installation procedure:
sudo python setup.py install
The spnav module requires ctypes, which is standard in Python 2.5 and later, although I have only tested spnav with Python 2.7.
spacenavd supports USB devices with no additional configuration file, but serial devices do need the port name set in /etc/spnavrc.
Neither spacenavd nor the 3dconnexion damon support more than one Space Navigator device connected to a single computer.
Serial devices may have a different convention for the orientation of the y and z axes. You might need to flip them in the configuration file.
The X11-based protocol works automatically with X11 forwarding and SSH, allowing you to send input events to software running on a remote computer. Note that libspnav and the spnav Python module need to be installed on the remote computer for this to work.
If you experience strange permission problems when the spacenavd daemon is started automatically by the Ubuntu boot scripts. If you are having trouble, stop the daemon:
sudo service spacenavd stop
and then start the daemon manually from a X terminal window:
sudo spacenavd
Alternatively, try using the direct UNIX socket protocol.