Touchpad blues - SEMI-SOLVED - for the moment

[OldProfessorBear]

OK. I got my new Dell Inspiron M5030 laptop set up.

But one thing has been driving me especially bonkers: the touchpad.

I do not like touchpads. Therefore, I plug in a USB mouse. For the first few days, it was nearly unusable, responding in a very choppy manner. I assumed that this was because the touchpad was fighting with it, though the action of the touchpad was normal.

In any case, I wanted to deactivate the touchpad, so I tried every solution on this forum. The most promising one was to install the synaptiks package. Unfortunately, it refuses to work, with rather ambiguous error messages. Essentially, it seems to think either there is no touchpad, that the touchpad can't be controlled, and/or that the synaptics driver is old.

I have had similar luck with every other package I've tried. A simple touchpad toggle always turn the touchpad on, never off. And so forth.

In the course of my travails, I discovered that the choppiness of the mouse was caused by the video driver! Tinkering with that for a bit, I managed to install one that didn't mess up the mouse.

However, the fershlugginer touchpad is still active, and at least twice composing this message caused the cursor to relocate to the middle of an earlier line, resulting in gibberish.

Oh, and I managed to find out some things: the system evidently thinks the touchpad is a PS/2 Generic Mouse, and that the actual USB mouse is a "HID 04d9:048e", which it believes is a keyboard!

Perhaps this is why the software can't find the touchpad???

Or not ...

I am flummoxed. I don't need this aggro during a very difficult time in my life.

[OMSkates]

Are you running KDE?  Have you tried Fn + F5 to toggle off the touchpad?

[Texstar]

Isn't there a program in the repo that parnote did to toggle it off? I can't remember the name offhand.

[OldProfessorBear]

Isn't there a program in the repo that parnote did to toggle it off? I can't remember the name offhand.

TouchpadToggle. That's the one that always turns it on, never off.

[OldProfessorBear]

Are you running KDE?  Have you tried Fn + F5 to toggle off the touchpad?

Yes, I am. I just tried that. Nothing happened. Curiously, the M5030 has a dedicated key on the function row to turn the touchpad off (or on). Naturally, it only works under Windows.

[OMSkates]

Possible bug issue: http://mikebeach.org/2011/04/correctly-recognize-alps-touchpad-on-dell-e6510-in-linux/  Perhaps someone could help modify his fix to apply towards OPB's PCLOS machine.

[OldProfessorBear]

Possible bug issue: http://mikebeach.org/2011/04/correctly-recognize-alps-touchpad-on-dell-e6510-in-linux/  Perhaps someone could help modify his fix to apply towards OPB's PCLOS machine.

That definitely looks to be the same bug.

As one of the replies notes, this will probably affect increasing numbers of laptops in the near future. I hope someone is on it at the kernel level.

What would happen (and I don't even know if it's possible) if the offending kernel module were left out altogether? Would it just find the USB mouse? I could live with that for a while ...

[OldProfessorBear]

This appears to be a fix for this under Arch Linux: http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=52538

... still pursuing this ... been many years since I was a software engineer, so don't want to do anything too risky ...

[OldProfessorBear]

Here is one possible solution (will have to set aside some time to mess with it):

http://www.imega.cz/Linux-Alps-Touchpad-Dell-E6410/Linux-Alps-touchpad-disable.php

[OldProfessorBear]

Before I dash out of here, one more thing:

Apparently this problem has been known for no less than THREE YEARS! One would think by now ...

ohwell.

[sammy2fish]

Are you running KDE?  Have you tried Fn + F5 to toggle off the touchpad?

Yes, I am. I ju-F3st tried that. Nothing happened. Curiously, the M5030 has a dedicated key on the function row to turn the touchpad off (or on). Naturally, it only works under Windows.

My Fn-F3 controls the touchpad in Windows, and in PCLOS.... and my laptop is about two years old.

[OldProfessorBear]

This:

http://ghettocottage.com/1020

sets out the exact problem and a (possible) solution.

It seems many (most?) new Dell, as well as other (Acer?) laptops now come with ALPS  touchpads instead of the old Synaptics standby. And the protocol is somewhat different. And ALPS is too anal to release any details.

So ... Dell did release (in Europe) an another distro driver for the ALPSbomination ... presumably some bright person can adapt it to PCLOS. I don't know that I am that person, what with time and other constraints.

Meanwhile, I found another way to turn the bloody thing off (or on, if I'm feeling masochistic or my mouse goes missing). This method may have been alluded to in these forums, I don't know after searching so many forums for a fix. It is given as follows, which will NOT work in the latest PCLOS:

xinput --set-prop "PS/2 Generic Mouse" "Device Enabled" 0

will disable the touchpad while

xinput --set-prop "PS/2 Generic Mouse" "Device Enabled" 1

will enable it again

However, our version of xinput requires the following, which work:

xinput set-int-prop "PS/2 Generic Mouse" "Device Enabled" 8 0

and

xinput set-int-prop "PS/2 Generic Mouse" "Device Enabled" 8 1

I made a little script of each of these and dropped them into /usr/bin, then made little taskbar launchers for them.

And they work.

[howardb0235]

Good Morning:
I am using a script created with Kwrite that I emailed to your Gmail address.

I don't see a way to attach the file to this posting.

I will attempt to paste it here.

if [ $(synclient -l | grep TouchpadOff | awk '{print $3}') == 1 ] ; then
synclient touchpadoff=0;
else
synclient touchpadoff=1;
fi

In rc.xml i assigned the program to Winkey-p:

 <keybind key="W-p">
      <action name="Execute">
        <startupnotify>
          <enabled>true</enabled>
          <name>toggletouchpad</name>
        </startupnotify>
        <command>toggletouchpad.sh</command>
      </action>
    </keybind>

Part of the problem over here at howardb0235 is that I know just enough to be dangerous.

Create this script with Kwrite and make it exicutable.
copy it into the Hidden KDE4 directory.

This came from someone else here on this board and unfortunately I am unable to remember who I submitted it here originally.

It work on my Leveno Thinkpad without a hitch.

Happy Computing:

howardb0235

[OldProfessorBear]

Good Morning:
I am using a script created with Kwrite that I emailed to your Gmail address.

I don't see a way to attach the file to this posting.

I will attempt to paste it here.

if [ $(synclient -l | grep TouchpadOff | awk '{print $3}') == 1 ] ; then
synclient touchpadoff=0;
else
synclient touchpadoff=1;
fi

In rc.xml i assigned the program to Winkey-p:

 <keybind key="W-p">
      <action name="Execute">
        <startupnotify>
          <enabled>true</enabled>
          <name>toggletouchpad</name>
        </startupnotify>
        <command>toggletouchpad.sh</command>
      </action>
    </keybind>

Part of the problem over here at howardb0235 is that I know just enough to be dangerous.

Create this script with Kwrite and make it exicutable.
copy it into the Hidden KDE4 directory.

This came from someone else here on this board and unfortunately I am unable to remember who I submitted it here originally.

It work on my Leveno Thinkpad without a hitch.

Happy Computing:

howardb0235

Thanks (again). Unfortunately, synclient will not work with the newer ALPS touchpad, at least until the driver is fixed. I have located a driver that should work for the "U" distro, from Dell Europe. Hopefully it can be adapted for PCLOS. Dell seems to be using the ALPS in many (all?) their new laptops, and some others (Acer?) as well, so I think this will become a bigger problem as time passes. That should prompt the boffins who know about such things to get it fixed, despite ALPS's anal attitude about the details of their hardware.