Trackpoint settings for wheel emulation in gpointing-device-settings are non-persistent

[Untitled No. 4]

Binary package hint: gpointing-device-settings

On a thinkpad, after installing and setting up the middle button of the trackpoint for wheel-emulation the settings are ignored after rebooting the computer and there is no wheel emulation. To re-enable the wheel emulation I have:
1. Disable wheel emulation and save settings.
2. Re-enable wheel emulation for a different button (1 or 3) and save settings.
3. Change button settings to button 2 and save settings.

This happens every time I reboot the computer.

At the moment the trackpoint shows as PS/2 Generic Mouse as per bug 492729.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: amd64
Date: Sun Jan 17 13:33:25 2010
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.04
InstallationMedia: Kubuntu 10.04 "Lucid Lynx" - Alpha amd64 (20100113)
Package: gpointing-device-settings 1.3.2-2
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=
 LANG=C
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.32-10.14-generic
SourcePackage: gpointing-device-settings
Tags: lucid
Uname: Linux 2.6.32-10-generic x86_64

[Jane Atkinson (irihapeti)]

I'm having a similar problem but with touchpad settings. I have Lucid installed on two different laptops with two different types of touchpad. They are Toshiba Satellite A10 with an Alps Glidepoint touchpad and EeePC 900 with a Synaptics Elantech touchpad.

I like to turn off tap-to-click, because I find it more trouble than it's worth. I can do this by using gpointing-device-settings, but the original state reoccurs after rebooting.

[Jane Atkinson (irihapeti)]

I've just discovered the same problem in Karmic on the Toshiba laptop.

In all cases, I'm using the lxde desktop.

[Thomas-Thomas (thomas-thomas)]

Same here with Kubuntu 9.10, except: trackpoint does appear in gpointing-device-settings as "TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint" with a trackpoint icon.

[Untitled No. 4 (untitled-no4)]

There is another way of getting trackpoint to work, at least for ThinkPad users), which is to open konsole and run:

xinput set-prop '"TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint"' "Evdev Wheel Emulation" 1
xinput set-prop '"TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint"' "Evdev Wheel Emulation Button" 2
xinput set-prop '"TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint"' "Evdev Wheel Emulation Timeout" 200

for vertical scrolling. Add the following as well if you want horizontal scrolling:

xinput set-prop '"TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint"' "Evdev Wheel Emulation Axes" 6 7 4 5

You will need to run this every time you restart your computer but if you can add it to a script and add it to ~/.kde/Autostart (in Kubuntu) so it will run automatically everytime you log in to KDE.

[Michal Čihař (nijel)]

I think this issue would be solved by 1.5.1 which is already in Debian testing but not in Ubuntu.

[Sebastian Geiger (lanoxx)]

if you get the error: unable to find device "TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint"
then you need to install gpointing-device-settings!
It was not automatically installed on my notebook after the upgrade to lucid and i have been using the .fdi files with hal. It might be a good idea to detect this and have lucid install the gpointing-device-settings package on upgrade, if running on a thinkpad?

Cheers Lanoxx

[Untitled No. 4 (untitled-no4)]

As of 5th April gpointing-device-settings still don't work properly for me after reboot as per my bug report. The alternative method in my post #5 has also stopped working with the error "unable to find device "TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint"" although the trackpoint seems to be identified in xinput -list output:
⎡ Virtual core pointer id=2 [master pointer (3)]
⎜ ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer id=4 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad id=10 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint id=11 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ Macintosh mouse button emulation id=12 [slave pointer (2)]
⎣ Virtual core keyboard id=3 [master keyboard (2)]
    ↳ Virtual core XTEST keyboard id=5 [slave keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Power Button id=6 [slave keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Video Bus id=7 [slave keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Sleep Button id=8 [slave keyboard (3)]
    ↳ AT Translated Set 2 keyboard id=9 [slave keyboard (3)]
    ↳ ThinkPad Extra Buttons

[whtvr (whtvr)]

I am sorry to say that I've been experiencing the same behavior while trying to configure my ThinkPad USB Keyboard with TrackPoint (55Y9041) - after I key in that set of xinput commands I get the same error message.

[Untitled No. 4 (untitled-no4)]

I have reinstalled Lucid today from the most recent daily build and the xinput commands work again on the newly installed machine, although they didn't work before the new installation (with all updates installed).

I guess something broke at one point which is not being fixed by updates, only by fresh install (unless you have more clue than I do).

[whtvr (whtvr)]

I've just installed Lucid from a daily build and the I still get the same error when trying to use xinput command. I installed it yesterday on my laptop (thinkpad x200s) and it's fully up to date.

[Untitled No. 4 (untitled-no4)]

My bad, I'm running a mainline kernel at the moment so this is probably why the trackpoint works for me. I think this deserves a new bug reported against the kernel.

[Tom Gelinas (tomgelinas)]

The upstream packages from the Debian people work properly. They package it in 2 parts, llibgpds0 and gpointing-device-settings . http://packages.debian.org/sid/libgpds0 http://packages.debian.org/sid/gpointing-device-settings

The "fix committed" tag is rather broad. Do any Ubuntu people plan on packaging this? The Debian packages 1.51 packages seem to work fine with Lucid.

[Tom Gelinas (tomgelinas)]

In fact the Debian packages aren't able to persistently disable the trackpad. I don't yet know what causes this, but trackpoint wheel emulation settings are persistently applied.

[[e-mail] (larsoner)]

The workaround using calls to xinput with '"TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint"' work for me when I replace those with "TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint"---I just got rid of the outer quote marks on the device name and it works. I am running the most recent mainline kernel, though.

[Sebastian Geiger (lanoxx)]

This bug seems to have been fixed, I just rebooted with 2.6.32-21 (i was still running on 2.6.32-19, cause a always suspend), and now the issue is gone and scroll works fine.

Mark as fixed?

[Tom Gelinas (tomgelinas)]

I don't know what caused it, but this issue has re-appeared in Lucid RC1.

[Tom Gelinas (tomgelinas)]

ha, of course: Lucid still has version 1.3.2, I think it's best to use Debian's 1.5.1

[Tom Gelinas (tomgelinas)]

Is it too late to bring in 1.5.1 to Lucid? The 1.3.2 is barely functional...

[Johannes H. Jensen (joh)]

I experience the same problem - the scroll settings are not persistent after suspend / resume. The issue seems to be related to the xinput commands not being persistent - the commands from #5 work but the settings are lost after suspending and resuming. Does anyone know how to make the settings persistent?

[whtvr (whtvr)]

http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/How_to_configure_the_TrackPoint#Configuration_using_xinput - there's a script at the end of this section, works perfectly for me (on both trackpoints on my laptop and my external lenovo keyboard)

[jlgoolsbee (jlgoolsbee)]

Not sure what (if anything) I've done differently here, but just wanted to note that I'm running the 10.04 final release (kernel 2.6.32-21) and gpointing-device-settings 1.3.2-2 (as installed from the default sources), and my scroll settings are persistent through suspend/resume and shutdown/restart.

[Yang Zhou (yangorang)]

I have exactly the same issue with my x100e TrackPoint scrolling on Ubuntu Netbook Remix 10.04.

[Sergey Savchuk (rifcoder)]

Have the same issue on 10.10 Maverik with my T410. I'm using gpointing-device-settings 1.5.1-2.