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i716

Member

From: Yokohama, Japan

Registered: 2016-04-18

Posts: 70

Lenovo X1 Carbon (5th gen) Trackpoint not working

Just bought the above laptop a few days ago and had to realize, that the trackpoint is not working in any Linux distro. It does however work in Windows and the diagnostic menu.

Inside the BIOS there are options to enable/disable the trackpoint and touchpad devices. If both are set to enabled, neither one works. If I set the trackpoint device to disabled, at least the touchpad works.

Very strange behavior, especially since most of the ressources found online only deal with certain buttons not working, not the whole trackpoint itself.

Any ideas?

Last edited by i716 (2017-08-02 04:49:07)

i716

Member

From: Yokohama, Japan

Registered: 2016-04-18

Posts: 70

Re: Lenovo X1 Carbon (5th gen) Trackpoint not working

This person has found a solution to the above issue, but it has its downsides as well:
https://ursm.jp/blog/2017/06/04/gentoo- … n-5th-gen/

He writes that adding

 psmouse.proto=imps 

to the kernel gets both devices working. I can confirm that.
This will, however, render advanced features of the touchpad useless. So no scrolling with two fingers, etc...

So even though this is a workaround, it does not fully solve the problem.

UPDATE; A newer kernel seems to have this bug fixed, but as it is written on his page, that refers to Gentoo.

ngoonee

Forum Fellow

From: Between Thailand and Singapore

Registered: 2009-03-17

Posts: 7,355

Re: Lenovo X1 Carbon (5th gen) Trackpoint not working

Shouldn't be too hard to check the difference between gentoo's kernel and ours. For reference we currently have 4.12.3 in [core] and 4.12.4 in [testing].

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xvzf

Member

Registered: 2014-05-18

Posts: 86

Re: Lenovo X1 Carbon (5th gen) Trackpoint not working

Hi there,

I got the same one!
Try setting

synaptics_intertouch=1

. That fixed it for me!
However the device behaves quite strange regarding the touchpad. My first TPX1 worked just fine, except the sound wasn't working at all. Now I am having trouble with the touchpad which randomly reconnects from time to time (Windows and Linux, same NVME drive with same setup as the "old" one).
Hope you have better luck! Lenovo wants to swap some cables to see if that fixes the problem - 5 weeks and the part is still not available...:(

Cheers,
Matthias

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i716

Member

From: Yokohama, Japan

Registered: 2016-04-18

Posts: 70

Re: Lenovo X1 Carbon (5th gen) Trackpoint not working

@Matthias
Thanks for your reply. I assume the above is a kernel parameter, right? The issue seems to be hardware related as it occurs not only in Arch Linux, but also in Debian, Fedora, and others. All tried with different kernel versions.
My X1 has arrived with a white spot on the screen so I have returned it for repair and just got it back yesterday. I will try your suggestion now and post the outcome.

UPDATE: Just tried your solution but unfortunately it doesn't work for me. Both the touchpad and trackpoint devices are completely dead.

UPDATE2: Works on Fedora with vanilla kernel 4.13 !

UPDATE3: Stopped working suddenly after a few reboots...

Last edited by i716 (2017-08-13 04:15:12)

vtrac

Member

Registered: 2016-01-28

Posts: 42

Re: Lenovo X1 Carbon (5th gen) Trackpoint not working

I just got this laptop a couple of days ago. The trackpoint seems to work out of the box with wayland + gnome-shell just fine, including middle-button scrolling. However, I'd like to do two things: invert the scroll and increase the speed. Running `sudo libinput list-devices` doesn't seem to list the device so that I can configure it using udev, as explained on this page: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/TrackPoint.  Anyone have any ideas as to why or how to get this to work?  Clearly something is recognizing it, but I don't see it in my list of devices.

R00KIE

Forum Fellow

From: Between a computer and a chair

Registered: 2008-09-14

Posts: 4,734

Re: Lenovo X1 Carbon (5th gen) Trackpoint not working

Make sure you update your laptop's firmware as it can contain some fix to make things work.

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R00KIE
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i716

Member

From: Yokohama, Japan

Registered: 2016-04-18

Posts: 70

Re: Lenovo X1 Carbon (5th gen) Trackpoint not working

@vtrac Strange thing since you have the same model. I still need to append  psmouse.proto=imps to the kernel to get both devices to work. The middle button does work however and scrolling speed can be adjusted in Gnome.

@R00KIE I assume you are talking about the BIOS/UEFI firmware. It's dated mid-July so it should be up to date.

Even the newest (stable) vanilla kernel on Fedora, 4.13.0-0.rc5.git3.1.vanilla.knurd.1.fc26.x86_64, (which seems to have the best compatibility with this laptop, e.g. everything works out of the box, including hibernate, no fans spinning, etc) does not solve this.

R00KIE

Forum Fellow

From: Between a computer and a chair

Registered: 2008-09-14

Posts: 4,734

Re: Lenovo X1 Carbon (5th gen) Trackpoint not working

Yes I mean the UEFI firmware. From my personal experience with a lenovo machine I'd say you should really check their page for updates, until the beginning of the year my laptop had almost monthly firmware updates fixing all kinds of bugs.

If there are no updates then you might want to figure out which driver is used for your trackpad/trackpoint and see the driver options, I remember that when I bought my laptop I had to tell the driver to force reset the trackpad, otherwise it wouldn't work. Now it works without forcing anything but I don't know if it was a kernel update that fixed it or a firmware update.

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R00KIE
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i716

Member

From: Yokohama, Japan

Registered: 2016-04-18

Posts: 70

Re: Lenovo X1 Carbon (5th gen) Trackpoint not working

@R00KIE

BIOS Information
	Vendor: LENOVO
	Version: N1MET37W (1.22 )
	Release Date: 07/04/2017
	Address: 0xE0000
	Runtime Size: 128 kB
	ROM Size: 16 MB
	Characteristics:
		PCI is supported
		PNP is supported
		BIOS is upgradeable
		BIOS shadowing is allowed
		Boot from CD is supported
		Selectable boot is supported
		EDD is supported
		3.5"/720 kB floppy services are supported (int 13h)
		Print screen service is supported (int 5h)
		8042 keyboard services are supported (int 9h)
		Serial services are supported (int 14h)
		Printer services are supported (int 17h)
		CGA/mono video services are supported (int 10h)
		ACPI is supported
		USB legacy is supported
		BIOS boot specification is supported
		Targeted content distribution is supported
		UEFI is supported
	BIOS Revision: 1.22
	Firmware Revision: 1.15

BIOS Language Information
	Language Description Format: Abbreviated
	Installable Languages: 1
		en-US
	Currently Installed Language: en-US

According to Lenovo, 1.22 is the current version.

May I ask how you made the driver to force reset the trackpad?

R00KIE

Forum Fellow

From: Between a computer and a chair

Registered: 2008-09-14

Posts: 4,734

Re: Lenovo X1 Carbon (5th gen) Trackpoint not working

If I remember correctly the driver for my trackpad is atkbd, you check the options the driver accepts and then create a file that specifies the options to pass to the driver when it's loaded, see https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Kernel_modules

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R00KIE
Tm90aGluZyB0byBzZWUgaGVyZSwgbW92ZSBhbG9uZy4K