bumping trackpad results in click (tapping) syntaptics

[Aaron Peterson]

brushing a finger on a trackpad should NEVER result in a click action. There is no reason for this, and it is highly disorienting for most of the people I know when random things happen on their computers. My novice friends fear computers because of random things happening, and many moderate people switch to external mice because of this bug.

Note, this highly disturbing behavior is also default in windows, and is called tapping. Macs also have a similar thing, but they at least have their trackpad click, but it's still wrong.

Basically,

1. we need tapping to be off by default, This will likely require a source modification to the syntaptics module, and not just a change in the config file, because it's a multi step config file change (something about dpms)

and for the few people who like it,
2. the option to toggle it on should be made easy. Right now it's googling and editing an Xorg config file, so everytime we have to regenerate an x config, it comes back up!

This is a security vulnerability, I have seen it happen on more than just me and my system, people click objects that they wern't trying to, and if it's an executable, or file that gets loaded, the system gets compromised... also people are more likely to submit web information and submit erroneous data into forms.

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

Hi myusualnickname,

Please attach the output of `lspci -vvnn`, and attach your /var/log/Xorg.0.log (and maybe Xorg.0.log.old) file from after reproducing this issue. If you've made any customizations to your /etc/X11/xorg.conf please attach that as well.

[This is an automated message. Apologies if it has reached you inappropriately; please just reply to this message indicating so.]

[Aaron Peterson (myusualnickname)]

This is a common enough issue that I don't understand why my xorg log and lspci are relevant.

[Marc Deslauriers (mdeslaur)]

Thanks for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. We appreciate the difficulties you are facing, but this appears to be a "regular" (non-security) bug. I have unmarked it as a security issue since this bug does not show evidence of allowing attackers to cross privilege boundaries nor directly cause loss of data/privacy. Please feel free to report any other bugs you may find.

[Gursimran singh (simar)]

Hi Aaron,

We are sorry for the delay in providing support.
Thanks for reporting bug and helping us to make ubuntu, even better. Unfortunately, the information you liked with the bug report is not sufficient for us to probe into the bug. For developers to work on this bug we want to have additional information from you, regarding the bug.

  Is the still present in latest meverick.

Consider referring this https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebuggingTouchpadDetection for any help.

[Aaron Peterson (myusualnickname)]

This is a miss-feature.

most laptops have track pads. Most track pads are configured to send a
click if tapped to the program under the cursor.

There are options to change this behavior in gnome, (in KDE one had to do
some configuration file editing)

I am just saying that the default should be OFF... because I witness so many
people miss click, and be very close to the unintended destruction of their
data.

Either you don't have any access to a laptop, or you are looking for a way
to close a bug in a way other than WONT FIX.

I expected a WONT FIX... as most computers have this erroneous behavior...
and some people are coming to expect it.

almost every user I talk to wants the setting in the off position. They
just don't know that it is an option.

-Aaron Peterson

On Tue, Nov 2, 2010 at 9:48 AM, Gursimran singh Mohar
<email address hidden>wrote:

> Hi Aaron,
>
> We are sorry for the delay in providing support.
> Thanks for reporting bug and helping us to make ubuntu, even better.
> Unfortunately, the information you liked with the bug report is not
> sufficient for us to probe into the bug. For developers to work on this bug
> we want to have additional information from you, regarding the bug.
>
> Is the still present in latest meverick.
>
> Consider referring this
> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebuggingTouchpadDetection for any help.
>
> ** Changed in: xserver-xorg-input-synaptics (Ubuntu)
> Importance: Undecided => Low
>
> ** Changed in: xserver-xorg-input-synaptics (Ubuntu)
> Status: New => Incomplete
>
> --
> bumping trackpad results in click (tapping) syntaptics
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/382071
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>
> Status in “xserver-xorg-input-synaptics” package in Ubuntu: Incomplete
>
> Bug description:
> brushing a finger on a trackpad should NEVER result in a click action.
> There is no reason for this, and it is highly disorienting for most of the
> people I know when random things happen on their computers. My novice
> friends fear computers because of random things happening, and many moderate
> people switch to external mice because of this bug.
>
> Note, this highly disturbing behavior is also default in windows, and is
> called tapping. Macs also have a similar thing, but they at least have
> their trackpad click, but it's still wrong.
>
> Basically,
>
> 1. we need tapping to be off by default, This will likely require a source
> modification to the syntaptics module, and not just a change in the config
> file, because it's a multi step config file change (something about dpms)
>
> and for the few people who like it,
> 2. the option to toggle it on should be made easy. Right now it's
> googling and editing an Xorg config file, so everytime we have to regenerate
> an x config, it comes back up!
>
>
> This is a security vulnerability, I have seen it happen on more than just
> me and my system, people click objects that they wern't trying to, and if
> it's an executable, or file that gets loaded, the system gets
> compromised... also people are more likely to submit web information and
> submit erroneous data into forms.
>
> To unsub...

[Gursimran singh (simar)]

The default setting is certainly not in my hands, thats the upstreams job and certainly ubuntu won't like to shift from upstream's decision as well. Whatever they have in their mind they have good reasons to do that.

So, in essence, I think this wasn't a bug. In that I'm closing the bug report. However if you feel like you encounter the bug and this is really a bug, different behavious than others, you can repoen the bug by setting the status to new again.