Ubuntu 13.10 upgrade broke click-and-drag

[nikitakit]

After upgrading to 13.10, click-and-drag no longer works correctly (system-wide).

Steps to reproduce:
* Open a window where you can highlight text
* Move the cursor to the start of the text you want to select, using the touchpad
* Press the right-click button and immediately start dragging using the touchpad
* Eventually let go of the button and stop dragging

On Ubuntu 13.04 this worked fine.

After upgrading to 13.10, however, click events are only registered with a large delay. So doing the steps above actually causes the following event sequence.
* The mouse moves along the drag path
* The button-down event registers long way into the drag (or maybe at the end of the drag path)
* The remainder of the mouse motion events then happen
* The button-up event triggers

(I verified the event order using `xinput test`)

Workaround is to wait (maybe about a second) between pressing the right mouse button and starting to drag.

Needless to say, this makes using Ubuntu pretty annoying.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 13.10
Package: xserver-xorg-input-synaptics 1.7.1-0ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.11.0-15.25-generic 3.11.10
Uname: Linux 3.11.0-15-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.12.5-0ubuntu2.2
Architecture: amd64
Date: Thu Feb 6 00:43:39 2014
DistUpgraded: 2014-02-01 11:51:02,949 DEBUG enabling apt cron job
DistroCodename: saucy
DistroVariant: ubuntu
InstallationDate: Installed on 2013-01-11 (391 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 12.10 "Quantal Quetzal" - Release amd64 (20121017.5)
MachineType: FUJITSU LIFEBOOK T901
MarkForUpload: True
ProcKernelCmdLine: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-3.11.0-15-generic root=UUID=1ce784cf-72d2-4312-bf02-c5e72148ff90 ro quiet splash vt.handoff=7
SourcePackage: xserver-xorg-input-synaptics
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to saucy on 2014-02-01 (4 days ago)
dmi.bios.date: 06/08/2011
dmi.bios.vendor: FUJITSU // Phoenix Technologies Ltd.
dmi.bios.version: Version 1.08
dmi.board.name: FJNB228
dmi.board.vendor: FUJITSU
dmi.chassis.type: 10
dmi.chassis.vendor: AOK331E5123F2005
dmi.modalias: dmi:bvnFUJITSU//PhoenixTechnologiesLtd.:bvrVersion1.08:bd06/08/2011:svnFUJITSU:pnLIFEBOOKT901:pvr:rvnFUJITSU:rnFJNB228:rvr:cvnAOK331E5123F2005:ct10:cvr:
dmi.product.name: LIFEBOOK T901
dmi.sys.vendor: FUJITSU
version.compiz: compiz 1:0.9.10+13.10.20131011-0ubuntu1
version.ia32-libs: ia32-libs N/A
version.libdrm2: libdrm2 2.4.46-1ubuntu1
version.libgl1-mesa-dri: libgl1-mesa-dri 9.2.1-1ubuntu3
version.libgl1-mesa-dri-experimental: libgl1-mesa-dri-experimental N/A
version.libgl1-mesa-glx: libgl1-mesa-glx 9.2.1-1ubuntu3
version.xserver-xorg-core: xserver-xorg-core 2:1.14.5-1ubuntu2~saucy1
version.xserver-xorg-input-evdev: xserver-xorg-input-evdev 1:2.7.3-0ubuntu3.1
version.xserver-xorg-video-ati: xserver-xorg-video-ati 1:7.2.0-0ubuntu10
version.xserver-xorg-video-intel: xserver-xorg-video-intel 2:2.99.904-0ubuntu2.1
version.xserver-xorg-video-nouveau: xserver-xorg-video-nouveau 1:1.0.9-2ubuntu1
xserver.bootTime: Sat Feb 1 21:33:26 2014
xserver.configfile: default
xserver.logfile: /var/log/Xorg.0.log
xserver.outputs:
 product id 2600
 vendor BOE
xserver.version: 2:1.14.5-1ubuntu2~saucy1

[nikitakit (nikitakit)]

Also, this doesn't seem to be a fixed-time delay between pushing the mouse button and the event firing.

Instead, it appears that the mouse-down event can only fire if the cursor is not in motion, or when the button is released (in which case mouse-down and mouse-up fire consecutively).

For example, clicking while spinning the cursor in circles never registers a drag event. But if I stop moving the mouse for even a moment, the mouse-down event registers then (regardless of how long ago I actually pressed it).

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[Dr Michael Brooks (michaeljtbrooks)]

Also apparent in 14.04 with Synaptics Touchpad. If the cursor is in motion while the left touchpad button is pressed, the click event only occurs after a long delay.

I've tried all sorts of synclient settings, nothing improves the situation. Interestingly a USB mouse works fine, it's just the touchpad that is affected.

[Dr Michael Brooks (michaeljtbrooks)]

After a fuck-tonne of Googling, I have a temporary workaround:

    sudo rmmod psmouse
    sudo modprobe psmouse

Simply unloading and reloading the mouse kernel module fixes the problem. This seems to be a kernel driver bug.

[penalvch (penalvch)]

nikitakit, thank you for reporting this and helping make Ubuntu better.

As per https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases your release is EOL.

If you have an issue in a supported release (ex. 16.04) please file a new report, and feel free to subscribe me to it.