Reading the Emacs manual on the GNU website, I found these two variables to set. I put them in the .emacs file. If I forget the quote on left, it fails to parse and I get an uncustomized emacs, so I'm sure the code is being evaluated. I'm very rusty on Emacs LISP and have tried both 'left and "left" and neither work.
It's of secondary importance but having the scrollbar end when the file ends is typical and I think scroll-bar-adjust-thumb-portion should make that happen, instead of the default behavior of allowing you to scroll down to complete empty screen on the bottom.
I don't see any other scrollbar customizations in my config except for ctrl-z and alt-z for scrolling a line, and setting colors in in custom-set-faces.
(setq scroll-bar-mode 'left)
(setq scroll-bar-adjust-thumb-portion nil)
Use the function
set-scroll-bar-mode,setqisn't enough for this particular variable. Alternatively, usecustomize. Note that this info is in the docs forscroll-bar-mode.