[Latitude E6510] Touchpad is completely insane

[Jeff Lane ]

The touchpad on the e6510 is completely bananas. B A N A N A S

It's twitchy, there's not necessarly a correlation between where you slide your finger and where the pointer actually goes, the pointer jumps all over the place, clicks where it shouldn't and won't click where it should.

The trackpoint device does seem to work well though... but the touch pad is bollocks.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.04
Package: linux-image-2.6.38-8-generic 2.6.38-8.42
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.38-8.42-generic 2.6.38.2
Uname: Linux 2.6.38-8-generic i686
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
AlsaVersion: Advanced Linux Sound Architecture Driver Version 1.0.23.
Architecture: i386
ArecordDevices:
 **** List of CAPTURE Hardware Devices ****
 card 0: Intel [HDA Intel], device 0: STAC92xx Analog [STAC92xx Analog]
   Subdevices: 1/1
   Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
AudioDevicesInUse:
 USER PID ACCESS COMMAND
 /dev/snd/controlC0: ubuntu 1427 F.... pulseaudio
CRDA: Error: [Errno 2] No such file or directory
Card0.Amixer.info:
 Card hw:0 'Intel'/'HDA Intel at 0x59660000 irq 44'
   Mixer name : 'IDT 92HD81B1C5'
   Components : 'HDA:111d76d5,1028040b,00100104'
   Controls : 15
   Simple ctrls : 10
Card1.Amixer.info:
 Card hw:1 'NVidia'/'HDA NVidia at 0x53080000 irq 17'
   Mixer name : 'Nvidia GPU 0b HDMI/DP'
   Components : 'HDA:10de000b,10de0101,00100200'
   Controls : 16
   Simple ctrls : 4
Date: Mon May 2 14:45:09 2011
HibernationDevice: RESUME=UUID=5146454f-5daf-4293-b07d-619e6b7a8816
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 11.04 "Natty Narwhal" - Release i386 (20110427.1)
Lsusb:
 Bus 002 Device 003: ID 0a5c:5800 Broadcom Corp. BCM5880 Secure Applications Processor
 Bus 002 Device 002: ID 8087:0020 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub
 Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
 Bus 001 Device 002: ID 8087:0020 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub
 Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
MachineType: Dell Inc. Latitude E6510
PccardctlIdent:
 Socket 0:
   no product info available
PccardctlStatus:
 Socket 0:
   no card
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=en_US:en
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcKernelCmdLine: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.38-8-generic root=UUID=71ccccc2-bef4-47cd-b03d-06bc5b3b7fe0 ro quiet splash initcall_debug vt.handoff=7
RelatedPackageVersions:
 linux-restricted-modules-2.6.38-8-generic N/A
 linux-backports-modules-2.6.38-8-generic N/A
 linux-firmware 1.52
SourcePackage: linux
StagingDrivers: brcm80211
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)
dmi.bios.date: 11/20/2010
dmi.bios.vendor: Dell Inc.
dmi.bios.version: A06
dmi.board.name: 0N5KHN
dmi.board.vendor: Dell Inc.
dmi.board.version: A03
dmi.chassis.type: 9
dmi.chassis.vendor: Dell Inc.
dmi.modalias: dmi:bvnDellInc.:bvrA06:bd11/20/2010:svnDellInc.:pnLatitudeE6510:pvr0001:rvnDellInc.:rn0N5KHN:rvrA03:cvnDellInc.:ct9:cvr:
dmi.product.name: Latitude E6510
dmi.product.version: 0001
dmi.sys.vendor: Dell Inc.

[Ara Pulido (ara)]

Is this not working with the nVidia driver or the open source driver? or neither?

[Jeff Lane  (bladernr)]

If I'm not mistaken, the touchpad driver is separate from the video driver, so running nvidia-current vs nouveau shouldn't have any effect.

From what I can tell, the driver that controls the touchpad is 'psmouse'

[Victor Tuson Palau (vtuson)]

this is not reflected on the certification testing. should this system fail certification?

[Jeff Lane  (bladernr)]

Yes. I think so given my experience with it... The touchpad is utterly useless and unless we can find another E6510 to either verify or refute that, it should fail.

Shot forth via my crackberry

-----Original Message-----
From: Victor Tuson Palau <email address hidden>
Sender: <email address hidden>
Date: Fri, 06 May 2011 13:03:11
To: <email address hidden>
Reply-To: Bug 775790 <email address hidden>
Subject: [Bug 775790] Re: [Latitude E6510] Touchpad is completely insane

this is not reflected on the certification testing. should this system
fail certification?

--
You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
of the bug.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/775790

Title:
  [Latitude E6510] Touchpad is completely insane

Status in “linux” package in Ubuntu:
  Confirmed

Bug description:
  The touchpad on the e6510 is completely bananas. B A N A N A S

  It's twitchy, there's not necessarly a correlation between where you
  slide your finger and where the pointer actually goes, the pointer
  jumps all over the place, clicks where it shouldn't and won't click
  where it should.

  The trackpoint device does seem to work well though... but the touch
  pad is bollocks.

  ProblemType: Bug
  DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.04
  Package: linux-image-2.6.38-8-generic 2.6.38-8.42
  ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.38-8.42-generic 2.6.38.2
  Uname: Linux 2.6.38-8-generic i686
  NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
  AlsaVersion: Advanced Linux Sound Architecture Driver Version 1.0.23.
  Architecture: i386
  ArecordDevices:
   **** List of CAPTURE Hardware Devices ****
   card 0: Intel [HDA Intel], device 0: STAC92xx Analog [STAC92xx Analog]
     Subdevices: 1/1
     Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
  AudioDevicesInUse:
   USER PID ACCESS COMMAND
   /dev/snd/controlC0: ubuntu 1427 F.... pulseaudio
  CRDA: Error: [Errno 2] No such file or directory
  Card0.Amixer.info:
   Card hw:0 'Intel'/'HDA Intel at 0x59660000 irq 44'
     Mixer name : 'IDT 92HD81B1C5'
     Components : 'HDA:111d76d5,1028040b,00100104'
     Controls : 15
     Simple ctrls : 10
  Card1.Amixer.info:
   Card hw:1 'NVidia'/'HDA NVidia at 0x53080000 irq 17'
     Mixer name : 'Nvidia GPU 0b HDMI/DP'
     Components : 'HDA:10de000b,10de0101,00100200'
     Controls : 16
     Simple ctrls : 4
  Date: Mon May 2 14:45:09 2011
  HibernationDevice: RESUME=UUID=5146454f-5daf-4293-b07d-619e6b7a8816
  InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 11.04 "Natty Narwhal" - Release i386 (20110427.1)
  Lsusb:
   Bus 002 Device 003: ID 0a5c:5800 Broadcom Corp. BCM5880 Secure Applications Processor
   Bus 002 Device 002: ID 8087:0020 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub
   Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
   Bus 001 Device 002: ID 8087:0020 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub
   Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
  MachineType: Dell Inc. Latitude E6510
  PccardctlIdent:
   Socket 0:
     no product info available
  PccardctlStatus:
   Socket 0:
     no card
  ProcEnviron:
   LANGUAGE=en_US:en
   LANG=en_US.UTF-8
   SHELL=/bin/bash
...

[Chris Van Hoof (vanhoof)]

Marc -- Can you confirm this on a 6510, I believe we should have access to more than one of these devices.

--chris

[Marc Legris (maaarc-deactivatedaccount-deactivatedaccount-deactivatedaccount-deactivatedaccount-deactivatedaccount)]

Tested with the one in the lab, I don't see this behavior. I can move the mouse around normally with the trackpad.

[Jeff Lane  (bladernr)]

Do we have more than one? I swear I am NOT insane and that when I used the touchpad on the 6510 that I tested Natty on the pointer would jump all over hte place when using the touchpad, while that little trackpoint device (the nipple in the keyboard) worked reasonably well.

[Marc Legris (maaarc-deactivatedaccount-deactivatedaccount-deactivatedaccount-deactivatedaccount-deactivatedaccount)]

We only have one in the lab, we should start putting the hw IDs on the bugs so we retest with the same hardware.

[Adam B Butler (adambbutler)]

I have one of these devices (an E6510 w/ ALPS trackpad) and I can confirm this intermittent behavior. (Or perhaps it should be "intermittently confirm"?)

When the trackpad works, none of this behavior is present. It either works fine...or it goes absolutely insane, as the OP described. I *have* observed a short "transition period" where the mouse is going from "works fine" to "insane mode;" essentially the mouse (or rather, the cursor on the screen) will begin to "drift" several millimeters upward on the screen, over the course of several seconds. If I place my finger on the trackpad and adjust the cursor (move it back to where it was, etc) I can get it to move a little bit, but the moment my finger leaves the trackpad the cursor moves (much quicker this time) back to wherever it was.

I've found that this "transition period" lasts for a few minutes...less than five. It's just enough time to use the track-stick (which tends to work OK during this period) to save my work and shut down the machine. As far as I can tell, resuming from hibernation or suspend simply restores the same erratic state of the trackpad.... I have to shut the machine completely down and power cycle in order to "fix" the problem.

The OP described the problem as "trackpad goes insane" -- and that's fairly appropriate. I mean, efforts to move the mouse cursor 2cm to the left can result in the cursor jumping/teleporting itself to the top right corner of the screen, clicking-and-dragging the entire way there. It becomes impossible to shut down the machine (without using keyboard shortcuts) because maneuvering to a specific spot, and actually selecting an item from a drop-down menu is impossible at that point. It's much more likely that I will resize/close windows containing unsaved data, or inadvertantly click-drag some item (like the system menu, or main menu bar) halfway across the screen, or... etc.

As to what causes "good trackpads to go bad," I haven't a clue. My uneducated best-guess opinion is that *maybe* high system load (or the heat resulting from said system load) is a factor -- because as far as I can recall, the "transformation" has always happened when I had a large number of applications running, producing enough heat that the system's fan was loud enough to hear (it is usually fairly silent) and warm to the touch. Honestly it is hard to do much in the way of troubleshooting (during one of these "flareups") because the mouse cursor is constantly working against me. :) The best I've been able to do is ALT+Tab to a terminal window and page through "dmesg" output -- which has never provided anything useful. (no error messages, etc)

Since there is no "application crash" per se, I have no dumpfile to attach... nor any specific error logs to add to the conversation. I'll happily provide any info that is required to help troubleshoot this -- just kindly let me know what you need.

Thanks! -ab

---

$ uname -a
Linux oof 2.6.38-9-generic #43-Ubuntu SMP Thu Apr 28 15:23:06 UTC 2011 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

[chrisodom (codom2)]

The Alps driver problem on the E6510 I thought was a known issue as it seems to be a problem with many laptops that are running this version of the pad, where there does not seem to be a working version of a Linux driver to solve it. My pad comes up installed as a generic mouse and when typing on the keyboard I get erratic mouse clicks, swipes and so forth. Dell does have an updated Alps driver for Windows on there site but I do not think that there is a Linux equivalent driver available. Was wondering if there is going to be a fixed driver for this version of the pad in 10.x or will not appear until 11.x kernels?

[Brad Heap (nzv8fan)]

I believe this problem is the same as: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/760142

In the comments of that bug report there is some links to some kernel patches that are suggested to work.

I have yet to try the patches as I don't want to risk having no mouse on my primary laptop... yet...

In the meantime I have turned down the mouse sensitivity etc... it means the mouse is slow to move around the screen... but errant clicks are less common.

[AceLan Kao (acelankao)]

Hi,

Could you install the dkms package I uploaded, modprobe the new alps module, and then upload the dmesg log?
   sudo dpkg -i alps-dkms_1.0_all.deb
   sudo rmmod alps
   sudo dmesg -c
   sudo modprobe alps
   dmesg > dmesg.log

I add some more debug messages in the new module, that will make me have a more clear picture, thanks.

[Marc Legris (maaarc-deactivatedaccount-deactivatedaccount-deactivatedaccount-deactivatedaccount-deactivatedaccount)]

Acelan -- I don't seem able to run those commands:

sudo rmmod alps
ERROR: Module alps does not exist in /proc/modules

sudo modprobe alps
FATAL: Error inserting alps (/lib/modules/2.6.38-9-generic/updates/dkms/alps.ko): Unknown symbol in module, or unknown parameter (see dmesg)

dmesg
[ 419.272668] alps: module license 'unspecified' taints kernel.
[ 419.272675] Disabling lock debugging due to kernel taint
[ 419.273122] alps: Unknown symbol psmouse_reset (err 0)
[ 470.416690] wl0: wlc_recv: dropping a frame with invalid src mac address, a2: ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
[ 470.527655] wl0: wlc_recv: dropping a frame with invalid src mac address, a2: ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
[ 491.771573] alps: Unknown symbol psmouse_reset (err 0)

[Brad Heap (nzv8fan)]

Same problems for me with attachment...

dmesg.log:
[ 194.796455] alps: module license 'unspecified' taints kernel.
[ 194.796464] Disabling lock debugging due to kernel taint
[ 194.796946] alps: Unknown symbol psmouse_reset (err 0)

brad@brad-dell:~/Downloads/mouse$ sudo modprobe alps
FATAL: Error inserting alps (/lib/modules/2.6.38-10-generic/updates/dkms/alps.ko): Unknown symbol in module, or unknown parameter (see dmesg)

[AceLan Kao (acelankao)]

Sorry, I didn't check that the alps is compiled-in, so we can't insert alps module again.
This is the kernel only add some debug messages, please use this kernel to bring up your system and upload the dmesg log.
   http://people.canonical.com/~acelan/bugs/lp775790/
Thanks.

[Marc Legris (maaarc-deactivatedaccount-deactivatedaccount-deactivatedaccount-deactivatedaccount-deactivatedaccount)]

Acelan -- I am still unable to run the mod commands. I booted the 2.6.38-8 from grub since -9 is also installed, installed the kernel and alps packages to no avail.

[AceLan Kao (acelankao)]

Sorry, I didn't describe precisely.
Forget the dkms package, please remove it from you system.
Just use the kernel I provided to bring up the system and upload the dmesg log.
Thanks.

[Ara Pulido (ara)]

Waiting on Marc's input

[Adam B Butler (adambbutler)]

Not sure why this went from Confirmed --> Incomplete --> Confirmed --> Incomplete like that... Marc provided (#21) the dmesg log requested in #20 ... Was it somehow insufficient? What additional troubleshooting can we (the unhappy owners of this evil, evil pointing device of Satan) do to further assist with the efforts?

BTW, I'm happy to try out whatever experimental/dangerous/firebreathing kernels and/or dkms modules and/or whatever, if you need an additional test-subject. But (apologies for the obvious question) am I correct in assuming my X86_64 Ubuntu (Natty) requires a 64-bit build of said module/kernel?

Um, actually, I think the mildly more intelligent question I meant to ask was: "I see the 'i386' patches/kernels/etc that have been submitted here for testing...is there a simple way I can download and 'convert' or recompile these to work with my system?"

If my question still seems obvious/dumb, please know that I blame the touchpad (clicking/dragging, changing words around and ruining the meaning of entire sentences!) in advance, wherever appropriate. :)

(Sincere thanks to those who are trying to help out with this, btw.)

[Jeff Lane  (bladernr)]

This is still somewhat of an issue in 11.10 on the E6510. The touchpad is not quite as twitchy as it was in 11.04, BUT it's still almost useless... sliding my finger up causes the mouse to rocket to the top of the screen, while sliding down causes the mouse to do almost nothing. Here's a short video showing this:

[Brad Heap (nzv8fan)]

This package solved the problem for me under 11.10 https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/550625/comments/492

[AceLan Kao (acelankao)]

Bug 550625 already solved E6510 touchpad problem, please use the dkms package Seth provided in bug 550625 to solve this issue temporarily.

And according to this comment
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/550625/comments/569
The SRU is not accepted by Ubuntu kernel team, so we have no chance to enable this device in 11.10 cycle.

[Justin Solms (justinsolms)]

Hi, I have the same erratic behaviour Dell Lat E6510 Ubuntu 11.10. The trackpad is cool. The external mouse is cool. Pressing on the palmrest (a test asked for by Dell service center) has no effect. Dell replaced the palmrest assembly containing the trackpad last week. The problem disappeared for a few days and yesterday it came back.

As I run Linux, dell asked me to go to the BIOS config screen (boot+F2) and try the external mouse, trackpad and touch pad. Mounse was cool, trackpad was cool, touchpad same erratic behaviour. I hope this absolves Linux. UNLESS the Linux driver is collecting some adaptive calibration information in real time and programming derived numbers back into some touchpad hardware calibration register. I have no idea if this is ever done, Its just a thought.

Good luck guys. Hope this helps
Justin