Touchpad 'forgetting' click/no-click on tap status

[David Shaw]

Binary package hint: xserver-xorg-input-synaptics

Ubuntu 8.04 - clean install from CD rather than upgrade from 7.10 on a Dell Inspiron 510m laptop

I switched off the 'tap to click' option in System>Preferences>Mouse - on first boot, this is fine, but if I don't type anything or use the mouse for a few seconds, the touchpad 'locks up' for a short while and then comes back

When it comes back, 'tap to click' is active, even though it is still disabled in System>Preferences>Mouse and changing the setting there has no effect. Also, it seems hyper-sensitive.

I've checked the bug database and wonder if this could be related to 34501 or 47971 (also 140599, although this one was closed as the problem could not be replicated) although the symptoms are not identical.

[David Shaw (dj-shaw)]

Also just found bug 18874 which seems to describe exactly the behaviour I'm getting - although that bug refers to KDE and I'm using Gnome - don't know if that makes any difference (probably not)

[David Shaw (dj-shaw)]

Me again - after checking bug 18874, I checked /etc/X11/xorg.conf and Option "SHMconfig" was not set. Setting this to "on" and restarting made no difference.

However, I noticed this time that the mouse freeze occurred during a large file download (>3MB) and, thinking back, each time the mouse has frozen on me has been during heavy internet access - not necessarily single large files; multiple package installs and installing multiple updates also had the same effect. Testing this, I rebooted and ran the computer for about 90 minutes with no problem, then I downloaded a 6.2MB file and the mouse froze and tap to click started up again.

I have *no* idea why this should happen or how there could possibly be any connection between accessing the internet and the touchpad, but...

[Brian Croom (aikoniv)]

This seems like it may be the same issue I experience on my laptop (Intrepid beta), and have sporadically since Edgy, although I've never noticed the issue occurring during file downloads. Nonetheless, every now and then the touchpad will stop respecting my settings for tap-click and acceleration and such. A look through the logs seems to indicate that X is getting some unexpected data from the device and is having to reconnect. Some relevant lines:

[ 1377.271499] psmouse.c: GlidePoint at isa0060/serio4/input0 lost synchronization, throwing 2 bytes away.
[ 1377.882912] psmouse.c: resync failed, issuing reconnect request
[ 1378.629313] input: PS/2 Mouse as /devices/platform/i8042/serio4/input/input12
[ 1378.672839] input: AlpsPS/2 ALPS GlidePoint as /devices/platform/i8042/serio4/input/input13

I am attching various logs..

Linux brian-laptop 2.6.27-7-generic #1 SMP Wed Oct 22 00:29:18 UTC 2008 i686 GNU/Linux

[William Grant (wgrant)]

This is probably caused by your touchpad deciding to wander off when it's idle for a while... or just because it's bored and feels like annoying you. When it reappears, it won't know about the settings. gnome-settings-daemon needs to notice this and set them.