Vertical scrolling for touchpad (Synaptics) does not work

[Bruce van der Kooij]

Binary package hint: xfree86-driver-synaptics

Ubuntu release: 8.04
Package and version: xserver-xorg-input-synaptics, 0.14.7~git20070706-1ubuntu4
Laptop brand and model: ThinkPad R51 2887 AVG

A few days ago I did a clean install of Ubuntu 8.04 LTS (Hardy Heron), before that I was running 7.10 (Gutsy).

I am currently unable to vertically scroll with the touchpad by dragging my finger on the right-hand-side of the laptop (top-bottom, bottom-top). The touchpad is actually horizontally scrolling (left-right, right-left) instead of vertically. Other than scrolling functionality the touchpad (synaptics) works fine (moving the mouse pointer, tapping etc.).

The description above is quite similar to the one from Bug #173411, however it seems the the conclusion reached there (and the fix released) was an entirely missing Section for the Synaptics touchpad. This is not the case here, the section was there after doing the install, and judging by the comments on that report others seem to be having the same problem (Comment #18 (Aaron Whitehouse), Comment #32 (lizardmenke)). Also see Bug #140545.

Switching to my xorg.conf from Gutsy doesn't work either (see attachments). Just to make sure I don't leave anything out, I run the command xmodmap -e "pointer = 1 2 3 6 7 4 5 8 9 10 11" on startup to configure the mouse buttons for my Logitech MX500, but I don't think this would be causing a problem (it didn't before, however this is an assumption since I haven't 100% verified).

If I missed something, please let me know.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
Date: Mon Sep 15 21:50:04 2008
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 8.04
Package: xserver-xorg-input-synaptics 0.14.7~git20070706-1ubuntu4
PackageArchitecture: i386
ProcEnviron:
 SHELL=/bin/bash
 PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 LC_TIME=nl_NL.utf8
SourcePackage: xfree86-driver-synaptics
Uname: Linux 2.6.24-19-generic i686

[Bruce van der Kooij (brucevdk)]

Oops. Turns out this "bug" was being caused by the command:

xmodmap -e "pointer = 1 2 3 6 7 4 5 8 9 10 11"

I disabled this command from the session (System -> Preferences ->Session) and now the touchpad works but obviously the buttons on my MX500 do not (no scrolling, back/forward etc.). That's a separate issue though, which is probably going to take a while for me to figure out.

Closing this report as invalid.

[Bruce van der Kooij (brucevdk)]

Sorry subscribers for flooding your inbox.

I just wanted to say, wow, color me impressed. Turns out I don't have to do anything to make it all work, apart from changing my mindset and removing all the changes to my configs I bring along from previous releases

I removed the "ButtonNumber", "Buttons" and "ZAxisMapping" properties from the "InputDevice" section for the MX500 (/dev/input/mice) and it just worked. Out-of-the-box, Automagically. This is amazing.