touchpad stops working (moving the pointer doesn't work)

[Ivan Zakharyaschev]

Sometimes, in my Ubuntu 12.04 system on Toshiba AC100 (ARM), the touchpad doesn't react to movements anymore: i.e., I move the finger, but the pointer doesn't move (it is even being hidden because there are no movements).

The buttons under the touchpad do work.

Also, when I switch windows etc. the pointer does appear, and then hides again. So it's not a problem of the pointer in X, it's a problem either of the touchpad physically, or of the driver for it.

I usually notice this when I'm working with a browser (Firefox), perhaps even with a map (like Google map) inside it. But this may be not related to the causes of the bug.

A workaround: attach a USB mouse. (It works.)

As I've found out somewhere under /sys/, the device is an Elantech touchpad, and the corresponding driver is psmouse.

I couldn't find anything relevant in the dmseg output.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 12.04
Package: linux-image-3.0.27-1-ac100 3.0.27-1.1
Uname: Linux 3.0.27-1-ac100 armv7l
ApportVersion: 2.0.1-0ubuntu11
Architecture: armhf
Date: Fri Aug 10 19:03:09 2012
SourcePackage: linux-ac100
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Ivan Zakharyaschev (imz)]

Perhaps, you'll find something in my dmesg.

It happened about an hour before I'm submitting this bug report (right before I attached an external USB mouse, which you can see in the dmesg).

[Ivan Zakharyaschev (imz)]

Today I noticed that although the touchpad appeared to be not working completely (no pointer movements, and the pointer in X disappeared), it must still be working physically because there was a reaction for the scrolling gesture (gliding up and down at the right side of the touchpad caused scrolling the window contents up and down, as usually).

So this must be some software problem, perhaps even of a higher level driver (X.org driver) which is responsible for interpreting the gestures (touching the touchpad) as either movements or scrolling...

[Ivan Zakharyaschev (imz)]

What can I do to help solve this problem?

[Marc Dietrich (marvin24)]

first make sure that there are no nvec related message in dmesg by doing a "dmesg|grep nvec".

The TP is known to be crappy hw. So you may sometimes loose connection but it will restart after some time. But I never noticed that the buttons or scroll wheel emulation still works. Will check this next time.

[Oliver Grawert (ogra)]

make sure you didnt accidentially press F9 ... that key is hardwired to power off the touchpad (nothing you can do against this in software)

[Ivan Zakharyaschev (imz)]

Here is a report of this issue to the synaptics X.org package in Ubuntu:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xserver-xorg-input-synaptics/+bug/1037586

And a very similar (according to the description) old report:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xserver-xorg-input-synaptics/+bug/830099

[Ivan Zakharyaschev (imz)]

@ogra: Thaqnks, I'll pay attention to the F9 key (it's the one with a touchpad on/touchpad off sign on it).

[Ivan Zakharyaschev (imz)]

@marvin24: thanks for your comment!

And what does it mean if there are nvec-related messages in dmesg?

I don't understand what nvec is, and what its relation to the touchpad is.

[Ivan Zakharyaschev (imz)]

At least, in the *tail* of overall dmesg that I have attached (which is some while after this issue occured) there are no nvec-related messages. But maybe the moment when the touchpad stopped working was already cut off in dmesg.

There are quite a lot of "page allocation failure" messages there. Can this have a relation to the touch pad issue?

[Ivan Zakharyaschev (imz)]

It just happened right now. I've saved dmesg output and the X's log. (Attaching them.)

There are no nvec messages in dmesg. But there are two "ec" messages. Are they important?

I've checked once again the behavior of the touchpad when this happens:

movements don't work,
but scrolling doe work (at the right side of the pad with a single finger),
clicking does work (by hitting the pad, or with the buttons underneath -- both work).

I tried to press F9: this turned the tocuhpad competely off. Then I pressed F9 once again: and this resulted in the same errpneous situation: movements don't work, other things do work (scrolling, hitting).

So it's not a matter of F9. And it's not matter of complete disconnection.

Please tell me:

What to do further to diagnose the source of the error?

[Ivan Zakharyaschev (imz)]

The "ec" messages I've mentioned:

[ 1.362365] nvec nvec.0: using adapter Tegra I2C adapter.2
[ 1.362377] nvec nvec.0: slave at i2c address 0x8a using irq 0xaa
[ 1.371116] nvec nvec.0: ec firmware version 01.20.00 / f9
[ 1.371901] nvec nvec.0: added 6 NVEC devices
[ 1.372583] input: nvec keyboard as /devices/virtual/input/input1
[24960.980495] ec system event c5 04 01 00 02 00 ......
[42797.806468] ec system event c5 04 01 00 00 00 ......

[Ivan Zakharyaschev (imz)]

I've found a workaround: put the system into standby mode, and upon the wakeup, the touchpad is fully working again.

[Dr. Azrael Tod (i41b-launchpad-net-hpgu)]

i have experienced some pretty similar situation some times now.
touchpad seems to be locked in two-finger-scrollmode
switching to terminal and back seems to fix it.

[Marc Dietrich (marvin24)]

@Ivan, the nvec message look normal. Btw, you can get rid of the "page allocation failure" message by increasing the min_free_kbytes in /proc/something, but this is neither critical nor tp related.

I also experienced the "tp stuck in two finger mode problem" when using firefox. Could be a TP hw, Elan kernel driver or Xorg driver problem. Unfortunately, we have one of the first (if not the first ever) multitouch version of the Elan TP, so firmware bugs are likely.

[Ivan Zakharyaschev (imz)]

@Azrael Tod: for me switching between windows didn't help (e.g. to xterm).

Or you mean to linux console? I'll try this the next time. (With Ctrl-Alt-F1, where F1 is--as usually--the key to the right of the ESC key, as I have just learned.)

I can't tell whether it is/was in the two-finger scroll-mode. The two-finger scroll-mode seemed not to work in my system.

@Marc Dietrich: I can't tell whether it is/was in the two-finger scroll-mode.

Thanks for the other hints!

[Dr. Azrael Tod (i41b-launchpad-net-hpgu)]

indeed i mean linux console and not some terminal-emulator

[Marc Dietrich (marvin24)]

it's possible that all problems are fixable by finding out the right synaptics parameter:
  xinput --list-props "ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad"
will give you a list of tuneable parameters. Don't ask me which one to choose.

"Doesn't move anymore2 may be related to wrong "Pressure"
"Doesn't want to stop scrolling" sounds like "Two-Finger Pressure" or "Coasting" problem

If someone finds out better values than default, please post a note here.

[Ivan Zakharyaschev (imz)]

This happened again for me (when I was using Firefox), and switching to the linux console (terminal) (Ctrl-Alt-F1) and back (Ctrl-Alt-F7) did help. (Thanks for the hint!)

Each time I switch back to X, a message in the log appears:

[ 7699.679] (--) synaptics: ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad: touchpad found

It looks absolutely OK, no explanation for the cause of the error.

[Ivan Zakharyaschev (imz)]

It feels like a sudden error, not a wrong parameterI

f there was a way to log the internal states of the touchpad drivers, then this information at the moment of the error could be useful for finding out the reason. Kind of debugger that would output the states of the touchoad drivers.

Then I could try to post such information.

[Ivan Zakharyaschev (imz)]

JFI: I turned off "tapping" for the touchpad (when "hitting" the touchpad and releasing it should be like a mouse click) -- simply because occasional unintentional tapping was inconvenient for me.

And in this new state, the error happened again.

[Ivan Zakharyaschev (imz)]

This time it was again in Firefox (when viewing a history of commits at Gitorious.org, I pressed the left button and was moving the pointer in order to select a piece of text; because of some peculiarities of the markup at Gitorious, instead of selecting the text, the action was moving around the rectangular area with text.)

[Ivan Zakharyaschev (imz)]

Can this be related to pointer "grabbing" discussed in http://unix.stackexchange.com/q/40458/4319 ?

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Stéphane Guillou (stephane-guillou)]

Hi there.
I believe I experience the same problem. Here is what happened:
I clicked on a tab in Chromium, and it got stuck with a right-click menu. I thought it was X and I had to reboot, but I used a USB mouse instead, and everything works fine.
The touchpad still doesn't work, the pointer doesn't move. However, I can scroll normally (right side) and use the touchpad buttons normally. Funny thing though: clicking with the touchpad (i.e. touching it once) gives the same result as a right-click.

Should this be a duplicate of Bug #830099? Or do we have a different problem?

[Stéphane Guillou (stephane-guillou)]

I just tried the "console" workaround, which worked perfectly. Back to normal.
If it happens again, I will try the "suspend" workaround.

[Stéphane Guillou (stephane-guillou)]

Oh, by the way, I am using a Samsung N310, with Ubuntu 12.10 up to date with proposed.
Sorry about the numerous comments.

[Kevin Fleischer (t-contact)]

OS: Kubuntu 12.04
HW: clevo p150em notebook - don't know the touchpad manufacturer

I have exactly the same problem with my clevo p150em notebook. (no movement, scrolling still possible) It's quite frustrating. It happened several time while I was watching youtube videos, but the reason for this could be that I did spend a lot of time on youtube...

I have synaptiks enabled (the tool to control the touchpad). I enabled the "disable touchpad for 1sec after button pressed" option and the "disable touchpad when mouse is present".

I don't know how to force this bug. Maybe some dev has to work for 1-2h without a mouse, maybe then the bug will occure.