I took me personally a bit of time to get the PS3 controller to work with my system, it ended up a being a udev rights issue which manifested itself as a segment fault, as most system are similar so I figured this might help others.

So this is in opensuse and with USB cable.


Step 1: 

Install xboxdrv, in my case (opensuse) it's found right here
modprobe joydev and modprobe uinput need to be enabled, in my case this already was the case, check with modprobe -l

Step 2:

start xboxdrv simply by typing xboxdrv, now here the fun part start, IF you get a segement fault then do Step 3, else go to Step 4

Step 3:

The segment fault seems to come from the fact that you as a user don't have rights to /dev/uinput and this needs to be solved by making a udev rule

Connect the PS3 controller to your system with a USB cable and do a dmesg so you get the correct Vendor and Product ID:

[Fri Jan 24 15:41:13 2014] usb 3-1: New USB device found, idVendor=054c, idProduct=0268


change to root and head over to /etc/udev/rules.d/ and using vi create a file called 40-xboxdrv.rules


In this file place the following code:

ACTION=="add", SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTR{idVendor}=="054c", ATTR{idProduct}=="0268", OWNER="root", GROUP="users", MODE="0660", RUN+="/bin/chown root:users /dev/uinput", RUN+="/bin/chmod 0660 /dev/uinput"

notice where you use the Vendor and Product ID and that you will give the group "users" rw right to /dev/uinput as well as adding the group "users" to the directory owner group.

save the file and reconnect your PS3 controller,  if you do a ls -l /dev/uinput you should get something like 

crw-rw---- 1 root users 10, 223 Jan 24 15:15 /dev/uinput

if you now type xboxdrv as normal user it should not longer give a segment fault.  (probably some other message but we don't care yet)

Step 4:

Create a file called PS3.xboxdrv in your home directory and paste the following code in it (which came from here with the evdev line marked out)

# Example configuration for the Playstation 3 controller
#
# Note this only works when connected with USB, when using Bluetooth a
# different configuration is required. 

[xboxdrv]
#evdev=/dev/input/by-id/usb-Sony_PLAYSTATION_R_3_Controller-event-joystick

[evdev-absmap]
ABS_X   = x1
ABS_Y   = y1
ABS_Z   = x2
ABS_RZ  = y2
ABS_#48 = lt
ABS_#49 = rt

[evdev-keymap]
BTN_THUMB   = tl
BTN_THUMB2  = tr
BTN_BASE5   = lb
BTN_BASE6   = rb
KEY_#302    = a
KEY_#301    = b
BTN_DEAD    = x
KEY_#300    = y
BTN_TRIGGER = back
KEY_#720    = guide
BTN_TOP     = start
BTN_TOP2    = du
BTN_PINKIE  = dr
BTN_BASE    = dd
BTN_BASE2   = dl

# EOF #

Step 5:

Basicly your done now and you can start the xboxdrv now using the following command:

xboxdrv --detach-kernel-driver --silent --mimic-xpad --config ~/PS3.xboxdrv

you can remove --silent to see more info if you run into trouble but normally it's not needed.
Of course you could even add this line in a small script or if your clever even in a udev rule so it starts the moment you plug the controller in.