my touchpad has gone insane....

the_slash · Posted: Sat Mar 19, 2005 5:13 am Post subject: my touchpad has gone insane....

i have a dell inspiron 1000 and ever since i started kde for the first time, i have had nothing but problems from the touchpad. i have figured out this much:

it appears to be a generic ps/2 mouse of some kind.

i have tried using synaptics drivers with it, which almost ruined my system. right now, everything is fine but this annoying little mouse. everytime i move it i end up with my toolbar being on the left side of the screen and all the icons are rearanged. i almost accidentaly deleted a file because the touchpad went berserk and clicked delete. if anyone knows a solution to this very troublesome and annoying problem, i would appreciate it.
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tom61 · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 07 Jan 2005 Posts: 111

Does the pad still work on other OSes?

the_slash · Posted: Sat Mar 19, 2005 10:43 pm Post subject:

yup. it worked on suse and xp just fine.
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jamapii · Guru Joined: 16 Sep 2004 Posts: 505

If you're using kernel 2.6.11, try 2.6.10. My touchpad on Dell Latitude D800 has some problems starting with 2.6.11

racoontje · Veteran Joined: 19 Jul 2004 Posts: 1290

plate · Posted: Mon Mar 21, 2005 1:17 pm Post subject:

Well, the fact that all Inspirons seem to have one might be something of a giveaway...

I'd advise prudence with Synaptics. The Changelogs for the last few kernel updates are full of changes to the driver, I doubt there's any other piece of hardware that's received so many patches over the past six to eight weeks...

My touchpad (ALPS Glidepoint, a Synaptics variant on Sony Vaios a.o.) wasn't recognised as such before kernel release 2.6.10-r4, up until then it was just a plain old IMPS pointer. I'm currently using the synaptics driver in 2.6.11 with CONFIG_INPUT_EVDEV=m and a heavily modified xorg.conf, but it is slow and double-tapping doesn't work. All this is supposed to be fixed in 2.6.12-rc1, but for me the upgrade breaks it again. The hardware detection part is turning out alright (with reenabled hardware tapping, apparently), but now it's my xorg.conf that is out of whack again - X exits with "no core pointer". I haven't looked any further into this yet, maybe there's a common cause and a fix we could both use?

the_slash · Posted: Mon Mar 21, 2005 5:10 pm Post subject: im using kernel 2.6.9

my current kernel is 2.6.9 i believe. if that helps any.
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the_slash · Posted: Wed Mar 23, 2005 1:46 am Post subject: nvmd i fixed it

lol. i fixed it. just like my last problem :wink:

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hanj · Veteran Joined: 19 Aug 2003 Posts: 1236

DeChief · n00b Joined: 14 Jan 2004 Posts: 21

same here. Inspiron 8600C.
Nitro Surces 2.6.11 the Touchpad is going crazy

Switching back to 2.6.10 all is going on normal

GenKreton · Posted: Thu Mar 24, 2005 9:40 pm Post subject:

also searching about the touchpad.... I came from 2.6.10 on a dell 600m using generic drivers for it. tapping to click hardly works and moving large distances is ok but short isn't.

dieterv · Posted: Sat Mar 26, 2005 3:28 pm Post subject:

I also have been bitten by this, my first kernel/hardware problem with Gentoo in over a year :cry:

I'm using a Sony Vaio (ALPS Glidepoint touchpad), and with 2.6.11-r4 it gets recognized as being just that.
Only now the tapping is waaaay to sensitive(just dragging the pointer clicks stuff), and tap-drag
to select stuff no longer works.
I'm back to 2.6.10-r6 where the touchpad is recognized as PS/2 Generic Mouse on isa0060/serio1
and everything works as expected "out of the box"...
And I tought 2.6 was supposed to be stable, grrrr :twisted:

Mark Clegg · Posted: Sat Mar 26, 2005 6:31 pm Post subject:

Got me too this one....

2.6.10-gentoo-dev-r6: Name="PS/2 Generic Mouse"
2.6.11-gentoo-dev-r4: Name="AlpsPS/2 ALPS TouchPad"

Using 2.6.11, the mouse is difficult to position accurately, has a tendency to want to go in a straight line, and for short moves, seems to issue button clicks at random.

Going back to 2.6.10 and it works fine.

This is on a Tochiba Satellite 1900

EDIT: adding kernel event support and using the Synaptics driver in X has seemingly resolved the issues.

dieterv · Posted: Sun Mar 27, 2005 5:05 pm Post subject:

Indeed, event support and synaptics with gentoo-dev-sources-2.6.11-r4 does work.
Though Xorg does not recognize the alps device as a synaptics touchpad and gives an error about this in its logs, strangly it does work as it should, except SHMConfig, wich has no effect whatsoever. Sadly this makes the synclient application unusable to rapidly test synaptics configurations. Oh well...
I also found a kernel patch (alps.pathc.gz) in /usr/share/doc/synaptics-0.14.0/, but apparently the patch is already applied

Here's my config for those who are lazy :wink:

GenKreton · Posted: Thu Mar 31, 2005 2:38 am Post subject:

is it a good idea to use synaptics driver with alps touch pads? Mine worked fine before without this extra driver.

dtor · Guru Joined: 19 Jan 2004 Posts: 461 Location: Indiana, USA

For 2.6.11 users not using Synaptics X driver I recommend turning off ALPS support by booting with psmouse.proto=exps (or adding "options psmouse proto=exps" to /etc/modprobe.conf if psmouse is a module).

If you are using Synaptics X driver please set protocol to "auto-dev" in xorg.conf so in case event device moves around it still "automagically" work.

If you have issues with ALPS in 2.6.12-rc1+ complain on LKML - we'll try to resolve.
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dtor · Guru Joined: 19 Jan 2004 Posts: 461 Location: Indiana, USA

GenKreton · Posted: Sat Apr 02, 2005 2:02 am Post subject:

adding psmouse.proto=exps was a beautiful trick. Feels better than ever. I may eventually try synaptics but it seems like more work...only thing I could care to get working is scrolling.

Thanks again!

val · Apprentice Joined: 30 Jun 2004 Posts: 234

dieterv · Posted: Thu Apr 07, 2005 7:56 pm Post subject:

val · Apprentice Joined: 30 Jun 2004 Posts: 234

^^^ Oh neat! I just tried it out on this page.

So, where can one read about the various gestures and features of the touchpad?
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dieterv · Posted: Fri Apr 08, 2005 5:47 pm Post subject:

val · Apprentice Joined: 30 Jun 2004 Posts: 234

Oh, there's a search site called google? I didn't know. :roll:

Uh, thanks. I think.
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paolo · l33t Joined: 23 Jul 2002 Posts: 768 Location: SBT (AP)

Same prob here (Acer TM291Lci) updating from 2.6.9-gentoo-r1 to 2.6.11-gentoo-r5.
In the next days I'll try one of those solutions.
Thanks guys.
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val · Apprentice Joined: 30 Jun 2004 Posts: 234

Yeah, I still haven't found good documentation in /usr/share/doc or google.

There is this one feature that is driving me crazy. When I drag in the corners, the browser goes back or forward a page. It's happening more by accident than on purpose, so I would like to turn it off. Does anybody know how to turn that off either by configuring the browser or the touchpad? Thanks.
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