Arch Linux

belbo

Member

From: Sydney, Australia

Registered: 2011-02-25

Posts: 51

[SOLVED] Synaptics touchpad problem eeepc 1000HE

I installed Arch on my eeepc 1000HE yesterday and configured / used it happily for most of the day - but then it developed a touchpad problem which I'm struggling to fix.

If you lift your finger from the touchpad the mouse cursors 'forgets' / 'resets' its position.

eg When you put your finger back on the touchpad the cursor jumps to a different position. For one thing, this means you can't tap to click, because when you lift your finger to tap, the cursor jumps somewhere else (usually a slight move, but usually away from the item one wants to click).

Also, when needing a few swipes (eg to move the cursor left to right across the screen), the cursor jumps away from its current position (to the left - sort of back to its original starting position) each time I lift my finger to make the extra swipe.

The problem seems to have started when I had a tv plugged in via the vga and was managing screen switching with xrandr and the screen-switch function key (I'm trying to set up the eeepc as a mythtv frontend) but this could be coincidence.

Some settings etc -

Relevant parts of /var/log/Xorg.0.log seem to be -

[    19.547] (**) Asus EeePC extra buttons: Applying InputClass "touchpad"
[    19.547] (II) LoadModule: "synaptics"
[    19.548] (II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/modules/input/synaptics_drv.so
[    19.561] (II) Module synaptics: vendor="X.Org Foundation"
[    19.561]     compiled for 1.10.0, module version = 1.4.0
[    19.561]     Module class: X.Org XInput Driver
[    19.561]     ABI class: X.Org XInput driver, version 12.2
[    19.561] (II) Using input driver 'synaptics' for 'Asus EeePC extra buttons'
[    19.561] (II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/modules/input/synaptics_drv.so
[    19.561] (**) Asus EeePC extra buttons: always reports core events
[    19.561] (**) Option "Device" "/dev/input/event8"
[    19.713] (--) Asus EeePC extra buttons: invalid x-axis range.  defaulting to 1615 - 5685
[    19.713] (--) Asus EeePC extra buttons: invalid y-axis range.  defaulting to 1729 - 4171
[    19.713] (--) Asus EeePC extra buttons: invalid pressure range.  defaulting to 0 - 256
[    19.713] (--) Asus EeePC extra buttons: invalid finger width range.  defaulting to 0 - 16
[    19.714] (**) Option "EmulateTwoFingerMinZ" "0"
[    19.714] (**) Option "VertEdgeScroll" "on"
[    19.714] (**) Option "HorizEdgeScroll" "on"
[    19.714] (**) Option "VertTwoFingerScroll" "on"
[    19.714] (**) Option "HorizTwoFingerScroll" "on"
[    19.714] (**) Option "TapButton1" "1"
[    19.714] (**) Option "TapButton2" "2"
[    19.714] (**) Option "TapButton3" "3"
[    19.714] (**) Option "CircularScrolling" "on"
[    19.714] (**) Option "CircScrollTrigger" "2"
[    19.820] (--) Asus EeePC extra buttons: no supported touchpad found
[    19.820] (EE) Asus EeePC extra buttons Unable to query/initialize Synaptics hardware.
[    19.886] (EE) PreInit returned 11 for "Asus EeePC extra buttons"
[    19.887] (II) UnloadModule: "synaptics"
[    19.887] (II) Unloading synaptics

and

[    19.964] (II) config/udev: Adding input device ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad (/dev/input/event7)
[    19.964] (**) ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad: Applying InputClass "evdev keyboard catchall"
[    19.964] (II) Using input driver 'evdev' for 'ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad'
[    19.964] (II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/modules/input/evdev_drv.so
[    19.965] (**) ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad: always reports core events
[    19.965] (**) ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad: Device: "/dev/input/event7"
[    19.980] (--) ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad: Found 3 mouse buttons
[    19.980] (--) ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad: Found absolute axes
[    19.980] (--) ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad: Found x and y absolute axes
[    19.980] (--) ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad: Found absolute touchpad.
[    19.980] (II) ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad: Configuring as touchpad
[    19.980] (**) ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad: YAxisMapping: buttons 4 and 5
[    19.980] (**) ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad: EmulateWheelButton: 4, EmulateWheelInertia: 10, EmulateWheelTimeout: 200
[    19.980] (**) Option "config_info" "udev:/sys/devices/platform/i8042/serio1/input/input7/event7"
[    19.980] (II) XINPUT: Adding extended input device "ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad" (type: TOUCHPAD)
[    19.981] (II) ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad: initialized for absolute axes.
[    19.981] (**) ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad: (accel) keeping acceleration scheme 1
[    19.981] (**) ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad: (accel) acceleration profile 0
[    19.981] (**) ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad: (accel) acceleration factor: 2.000
[    19.981] (**) ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad: (accel) acceleration threshold: 4
[    19.992] (II) config/udev: Adding input device ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad (/dev/input/mouse0)
[    19.992] (II) No input driver/identifier specified (ignoring)

I have commented out the touchpad section in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-evdev.conf  (un-commenting made no difference) -

#Section "InputClass"
#        Identifier "evdev touchpad catchall"
#        MatchIsTouchpad "on"
#        MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*"
#        Driver "evdev"
#EndSection

/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-synaptics.conf looks like this -

Section "InputClass"
      Identifier "touchpad"
      Driver "synaptics"
      MatchIsTouchpad "on"
             Option "TapButton1" "1"
             Option "TapButton2" "2"
             Option "TapButton3" "3"
             Option "VertEdgeScroll" "on"
             Option "VertTwoFingerScroll" "on"
             Option "HorizEdgeScroll" "on"
             Option "HorizTwoFingerScroll" "on"
             Option "CircularScrolling" "on"
             Option "CircScrollTrigger" "2"
             Option "EmulateTwoFingerMinZ" "0"
EndSection

I thought the issue might be related to this https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/20830 , but adding MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*" to /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-synaptics.conf didn't make a difference.

My Daemons array looks like this -
DAEMONS=(syslog-ng dbus !network wicd netfs crond lircd samba alsa !hal sshd gdm)
Removing the ! before hal made no difference.

I am using gnome. Changing the settings in  the /desktop/gnome/peripherals/touchpad/ folder with gconf-editor makes no difference to the problem.

I am using kernel 2.6.38-ARCH. Using the fallback kernel didn't help.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks

Last edited by belbo (2011-04-26 12:58:17)

belbo

Member

From: Sydney, Australia

Registered: 2011-02-25

Posts: 51

Re: [SOLVED] Synaptics touchpad problem eeepc 1000HE

Update. After some more searching the forum I thought downgrading udev may help. Since I had a fresh install I needed to install the AUR downgrade package. I did a yaourt -Suy before doing so which, amongst other things, installed a new kernel (4-1) and upgraded yajl. When I tried yaourt -S downgrade I got an error re yajl - error while loading shared libraries libyajl.so.1, canot open shared object file, no such file or directory, and then "error: target not found: dowgrade".

Any help really appreciated.

belbo

Member

From: Sydney, Australia

Registered: 2011-02-25

Posts: 51

Re: [SOLVED] Synaptics touchpad problem eeepc 1000HE

Problem solved. I downgraded yajl from my cache. Then was able to install the downgrade package with yaourt. Used that to downgrade to udev 166-2. (First time I've downgraded a package). Touchpad seems to be back to normal now.

Just some basic questions on editing posts in this forum. How do you do quotes (to frame code, terminal output etc) ? Also - how do I edit the title of this post to prefix it with [SOLVED]?

Thanks

ewaller

Administrator

From: Pasadena, CA

Registered: 2009-07-13

Posts: 19,804

Re: [SOLVED] Synaptics touchpad problem eeepc 1000HE

Moderator -- Edit your first post.  There is an option for changing the tread title.  In the future, you should also use BBCode code tags around the output of programs and config files.  It uses a mono spaced font allowing columns to align and it provides scroll bars for longer listings.

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belbo

Member

From: Sydney, Australia

Registered: 2011-02-25

Posts: 51

Re: [SOLVED] Synaptics touchpad problem eeepc 1000HE

Thanks. Will do. I see that clicking on the BBCode hyperlink explains how to do the quotes etc.

Great signature line quotation by the way.

Last edited by belbo (2011-04-26 12:59:35)

belbo

Member

From: Sydney, Australia

Registered: 2011-02-25

Posts: 51

Re: [SOLVED] Synaptics touchpad problem eeepc 1000HE

Just to update this post. Its about 6 weeks later and I've just installed Arch on my eeepc 900. I got the same problem with the touchpad - but this time I couldn't downgrade udev to 166-2 since that now creates dependency issues. I did some more googling and found this solution, which worked - https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php … 46#p508446.