Bug 399027 – ALPS Glidepoint detected however behaviour seriously changed in linux-3.x.x

• Product: Gentoo Linux
• Status: RESOLVED FIXED

[Description deadeyes 2012-01-15 20:39:50 UTC]

Hi all,

I have a Dell Precision M4500.
Yesterday I upgraded to kernel 3.x.
I came from 2.6.39-r3 with a kernel patch applied (I think it was this one http://www.spinics.net/lists/linux-input/msg12507.html) .

Since then I have the following issue:

My touchpad goes really slow by default. So going over the whole width of the touchpad only moves the mouse like 1cm.
Also, I am no longer able to tap on the touchpad to click and scrolling doesn't work either.

I tried to apply the same patch without luck. I checked the reject files and it seems like most of this code is actually taken into the main kernel tree.
However my touchpad still doesn't seem to work as expected.

I did change one setting through synclient to speed up the mouse and that did work. However tap to click and scroll I can't get to work.

What am I missing here?
anyone experienced the same issue?

Device info:
I: Bus=0011 Vendor=0002 Product=0008 Version=7326
N: Name="AlpsPS/2 ALPS DualPoint TouchPad"
P: Phys=isa0060/serio1/input0
S: Sysfs=/devices/platform/i8042/serio1/input/input6
U: Uniq=
H: Handlers=mouse1 event6
B: PROP=8
B: EV=b
B: KEY=e420 70000 0 0 0 0
B: ABS=260800001000003

From dmesg:

[ 5.554129] alps.c: E6 report: 00 00 64
[ 5.572634] alps.c: E7 report: 73 02 64
[ 5.684689] alps.c: trackstick E7 report: 42 02 14
[ 6.087926] alps.c: alps:dell_e2_setup: param[0]: 88,param[1]: 7, param[2]: 9d
[ 6.087929]
[ 6.116632] alps.c: Enabled hardware quirk, falling back to psmouse-core
[ 6.129283] input: ImPS/2 ALPS DualPoint TouchPad as /devices/platform/i8042/serio1/input/input5
[ 6.399579] EXT4-fs (dm-0): re-mounted. Opts: discard
[ 6.440521] EXT4-fs (dm-1): mounted filesystem with ordered data mode. Opts: discard
[ 6.481557] Adding 2097148k swap on /dev/mapper/vg-swap. Priority:-1 extents:1 across:2097148k
[ 6.903001] e1000e 0000:00:19.0: irq 43 for MSI/MSI-X
[ 6.953231] e1000e 0000:00:19.0: irq 43 for MSI/MSI-X
[ 6.953605] ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): eth0: link is not ready
[ 9.447307] e1000e: eth0 NIC Link is Up 1000 Mbps Full Duplex, Flow Control: Rx
[ 9.447885] ADDRCONF(NETDEV_CHANGE): eth0: link becomes ready
[ 17.392024] psmouse.c: DualPoint TouchPad at isa0060/serio1/input0 lost synchronization, throwing 2 bytes away.
[ 17.905824] psmouse.c: resync failed, issuing reconnect request 

On my old kernel I only get these messages in dmesg:
[    2.601628] alps.c: Enabled hardware quirk, falling back to psmouse-core
[    2.617388] input: ImPS/2 ALPS GlidePoint as /devices/platform/i8042/serio1/input/input5

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
Install 3.1.6 kernel
Actual Results:  
With psmouse module compiled in:
very low sensitivity from touchpad. Going over the whole width of the touchpad moves the cursor only a like 1 cm.
No tap to click is possible anymore. No scroll at the side (2 finger scroll does work however)

With psmouse as module:
Touchpad is totally unusable. If I use the touchpad the mouse is going everywhere on the screen.

Expected Results:  
Normal mouse behavior and sensitivity.
Tap to click should work

[Comment 1 deadeyes 2012-01-15 21:09:16 UTC]

Just noticed that compiling the module build in or not doesn't make differences.
I get very weird mouse movements.

I will clean my kernel source tree and compile it again to make sure nothing is going wrong there as at first my touchpad was somewhat usable while now it totally isn't  :s

Also I would like to add this, found in Xorg.0.log:
[     8.853] (EE) TouchPad no synaptics event device found
[     8.853] (EE) xf86OpenSerial: No Device specified.
[     8.853] (EE) Synaptics driver unable to open device
[     8.853] (EE) PreInit returned 11 for "TouchPad"

However I do get this on kernel 2.6.39-r3 as well so this might not be a real clue.

[Comment 2 deadeyes 2012-01-16 12:54:05 UTC]

I compiled kernel-3.0.6.

The same behavior occured: very low mouse sensitivity.
After changing the speed with synclient the mouse sensitivity is ok.
Tap to click does not work and I can't get it to work.

I created /etc/modprobe.d/psmouse:
options psmouse proto=imps

After reloading the psmouse module I get the old behavior back.
However note that synclient is useless as the synaptics driver is not loaded.
That is probably due to the mouse being forced to use imps.


Although I am helped at the moment I think it would be nice to have this fixed in a future kernel so I don't have to use imps.

If you need any further info on this please ask me and I will be happy providing it. Same for testing.

[Comment 3 Agostino Sarubbo 2012-01-17 11:19:07 UTC]

Please do not add arch teams on your own

[Comment 4 deadeyes 2012-02-19 22:06:16 UTC]

I revisited this issue and fixed it.

For all people going to 3.x: previously IMPS was used for Touchpads. In 3.x touchpads are actually seen as touchpad :D

So now my touchpad device is seen as an ALPS PS2 DualPoint.
I: Bus=0011 Vendor=0002 Product=0008 Version=7326
N: Name="AlpsPS/2 ALPS DualPoint TouchPad"
P: Phys=isa0060/serio1/input0
S: Sysfs=/devices/platform/i8042/serio1/input/input6
U: Uniq=
H: Handlers=mouse1 event6
B: PROP=8
B: EV=b
B: KEY=e420 70000 0 0 0 0
B: ABS=260800001000003

However whatever I did using synclient I couldn't get tap to click to work and the behaviour was different then before! In KDE I tried using the touchpad settings but without any luck.

I do had some synaptics settings in xorg.conf. I commented them all out (actually I removed the whole touchpad config from the Xorg ServerLayout). After restarting X, everything seems to be working as it should again:
- tap to click
- scroll on the right side of the pad
- ...

Moral of this story: comment out all your touchpad config in Xorg.conf and try again before thinking something is broken.

Note that I tested this in 3.2.6.

I hope this helps someone out!