Touchpad on Dell Latitude d520[solved]

[pottzie]

I have a Dell Latitude d520, with BBQ LXDE installed. The touchpad on this thing sucks, to put it mildly. I had Fedora on it before, and the folks at Fedora pointed me to a page that said to make a file for the touchpad in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-touchpad.conf .
http://useful-linux-tips.blogspot.com/2 ... inter.html

The guide assumes that Gnome is the desktop. I tried it, but I don't think LXDE recognizes the new file. Anyone know how to get a (probably flaky from the factory) touchpad to work?

[machinebacon]

Xorg entries and generally system-wide, so independent of the used Desktop (can't follow the weblink atm)

Is it possible your touchpad is Alps, and not Synaptics?

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egrep -i 'synap|alps|etps' /proc/bus/input/devices

This should give a hint. According to the touchpad device name you can refine your search. I have the feeling that it's an Alps.

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policy udev-config-siduction

Is this package installed? If no, get it with

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ins udev-config-siduction

It should contain a touchpad configuration for Alps. Please report back :)

[pottzie]

Yep, alps is the program, and it's installed. Looks like this is as good as it gets, I suppose.

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larry@dell:~$ egrep -i 'synap|alps|etps' /proc/bus/input/devices
N: Name="AlpsPS/2 ALPS GlidePoint"
larry@dell:~$ policy udev-config-siduction
udev-config-siduction:
  Installed: 0.12.2
  Candidate: 0.12.2
  Version table:
 *** 0.12.2 0
        500 http://packages.siduction.org/base/ unstable/main i386 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
larry@dell:~$ ins udev-config-siduction
[sudo] password for larry: 
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
udev-config-siduction is already the newest version.
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not up

[machinebacon]

Create a /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-touchpad.conf as root with following content:

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Section "InputDevice"
   Identifier   "Alps Touchpad"
   Driver      "synaptics"
   Option      "SendCoreEvents"   "true"
   Option      "Device"      "/dev/input/event3"
   Option      "Protocol"      "event"
   Option      "MinSpeed"      "0.3"
   Option      "MaxSpeed"      "0.8"
   Option      "AccelFactor"      "0.1"
   Option      "LeftEdge"      "10"
   Option      "RightEdge"      "900"
   Option      "TopEdge"      "150"
   Option      "BottomEdge"      "650"
   Option      "HorizScrollDelta"   "20"
   Option      "VertScrollDelta"   "15"
   Option      "FingerLow"      "10"
   Option      "SHMConfig"      "On"
EndSection

See the line with "Device"? Enter you own device number there, you find it out by checking:

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cat /proc/bus/input/devices

, search for the section that mentions your touchpad and replace the value in xorg.conf (could be, for example, the value "/dev/psaux") You can also try to replace the

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 Option "Protocol" "event"

with

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Option  "Protocol"      "auto-dev"

Save, exit, and reboot. And pray :)

Reference: http://debianforum.de/forum/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=91970

[pottzie]

So I made /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-touchpad.conf and changed 'device' to /devices/platform/i8042/serio1/input/input10

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I: Bus=0011 Vendor=0002 Product=0008 Version=0200
N: Name="AlpsPS/2 ALPS GlidePoint"
P: Phys=isa0060/serio1/input0
S: Sysfs=/devices/platform/i8042/serio1/input/input10
U: Uniq=
H: Handlers=mouse2 event10 
B: PROP=0

The touchpad still sucks, though. Went back after the first reboot and changed the protocol to 'auto-dev,' and that didn't make it any better, either. Guess Dell never bothered to make the touchpad work via the kernel.

[machinebacon]

How about:

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sudo egrep -i touchpad /var/log/syslog

and let's try:

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sudo modprobe -r psmouse
sudo modprobe psmouse proto=imps

Does it (still) work (better)?

[machinebacon]

Just to make sure:

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sudo apt-get install xserver-xorg-input-synaptics

[pottzie]

It's better, but I still wouldn't call it good. Xeverything was already installed, all the modprobe stuff seemed to work OK. It probably made some improvement, but I'd hate to have to use the touchpad exclusively. Thanks to a wireless mouse, I can do stuff without the touchpad, but if I take this out of the house, I'm going to have a hard time. Jerky, pages and tabs open and close without clicking, the cursor stops on a link and then opens it without any clicking on it, etc.

Not the end of the world, but it would be nice to have the laptop fully functional.

[machinebacon]

I totally understand, a sucky touchpad is worse than none. Have you had the chance to use it on Windows? Is it equally rubbish there, too? Might be a hardware problem then, a physical one. I'm just asking because one of my notebooks suffered the same symptoms after being treated a bit rough on a plane...

Does the touchpad have a) tap-to-click enabled, and b) pyhsical mouse buttons?

[Verändert]

Don't use windows to try if you're not sure it worked before. Use one of the *buntus.

[machinebacon]

^ Can you elaborate? I don't see where Ubuntu's and Debain's touchpad detection and setup would differ (but I'm willing to learn it).

I just asked the OP if it used to work better in Windows (if there was MS on the machine before)

[pottzie]

I have BBQ installed as a dual boot with Mint. Sucks on Mint too. Also sucked on Fedora, when I had that. First post in this thread has a guide I used to "improve" the touchpad, sorta (and saying that probably doesn't make the job of getting this working any easier) in fedora.

Touchpad has two mouse buttons, and hitting both at the same time acts as a middle mouse button. It came with a hard drive that had Windows 7, and I had to wipe that and install Linux, as I didn't have the Windows password. I did notice though that the mouse seemed to work pretty good with Windows, as I was able to use Windows (on a generic account) for a few hours before I overwrote the hard drive.

[Verändert]

Well, if it had worked in *buntu but not with BBQ, it might simply be misconfigured OR the newer packages in BBQ might be the cause of trouble. That's why i like to check with *buntu. If something works there, there is has to be a solution somewhere so i just look at the config files and if these are the same, i check if i have the packages *buntu has and their version and install the same in Debian. Well, at least these were my thoughts. I may be wrong though. Am i ?

[pottzie]

So far it's been consistent (poor) across all Linux operating systems.

EDIT: After using it for a bit now, the touchpad IS working better. Maybe I'm just expecting too much from it. I'll play with it for a but more and see what happens.

[pottzie]

Just as an update, found a guide that worked, or at least made it better.
http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=95940

source for driver http://www.dahetral.com/public-download ... d-3-5/view

Have to make a directory for the driver and change the driver name to whatever the current version is from the name in the guide.