Arch Linux

hexdsl

Member

Registered: 2015-02-08

Posts: 11

Trackball now working as pointing device.

Hello all.

Today i had a Kensington Expert mouse arrive (its a trackball), its wireless. on my windows machine, and my other linux machine it works 100% perfectly but on my main machine (the one i want to use it on) the buttons and scroll wheel work fine but the ball is ignored and does not move the pointer at all.

i have tried booting up with no usb devices plugged in other than the track ball (it has a little wireless usb thingy) i have also tried connecting to it via bluetooth, same behaviour,

when i run "sudo libinput  list-devices" i get the following

----------------------------------------
Device:           Kensington Expert Wireless TB Mouse
Kernel:           /dev/input/event31
Group:            12
Seat:             seat0, default
Capabilities:     pointer
Tap-to-click:     n/a
Tap-and-drag:     n/a
Tap drag lock:    n/a
Left-handed:      disabled
Nat.scrolling:    disabled
Middle emulation: disabled
Calibration:      n/a
Scroll methods:   none
Click methods:    none
Disable-w-typing: n/a
Accel profiles:   n/a
Rotation:         n/a

Device:           Kensington Expert Wireless TB Consumer Control
Kernel:           /dev/input/event257
Group:            12
Seat:             seat0, default
Capabilities:     keyboard
Tap-to-click:     n/a
Tap-and-drag:     n/a
Tap drag lock:    n/a
Left-handed:      n/a
Nat.scrolling:    n/a
Middle emulation: n/a
Calibration:      n/a
Scroll methods:   none
Click methods:    none
Disable-w-typing: n/a
Accel profiles:   n/a
Rotation:         n/a
----------------------------------------

Im on I3wm.

i hope someone can assist me.

progandy

Member

Registered: 2012-05-17

Posts: 5,190

Re: Trackball now working as pointing device.

That is a known bug in the 4.18 kernel.
https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=200849

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hexdsl

Member

Registered: 2015-02-08

Posts: 11

Re: Trackball now working as pointing device.

thank you for the reply.

please excuse my lack of understanding on this but should i roll back the kernel or wait for a fix?

progandy

Member

Registered: 2012-05-17

Posts: 5,190

Re: Trackball now working as pointing device.

If you want to use the trackball now, then you should roll back to 4.17.X or use linux-lts. Follow the bug report to see when it is fixed and you can use the newest kernel again. It looks like it may take some time until a fix is found and commited to the kernel.

Last edited by progandy (2018-08-29 13:37:14)

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hexdsl

Member

Registered: 2015-02-08

Posts: 11

Re: Trackball now working as pointing device.

thank you