Elantech touch pad device not detected/working properly

[Christian González]

I just upgraded to Ubuntu 17.10 (hooray, GNOME!). But there are some quirks. Under Unity/Ubuntu 17.04 my built-in Touchpad worked flawlessly - especially the "natural scrolling" mode was working well. As I saw under Ubuntu Gnome 17.04, the corresponding setting in gnome-control-center "Natural scrolling" just targets the mouse and has no effect on the touchpad.

I can see the touchpad using "xinput list":
⎡ Virtual core pointer id=2 [master pointer (3)]
⎜ ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer id=4 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad id=14 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ Logitech Performance MX id=12 [slave pointer (2)]

alongside my Logitech mouse on a Unifying receiver.

Is there any chance that this touchpad is detected? Or should I forget about that (WONTFIX) as Xorg is already unsupported?
ATM I am using the prop. nvidia drivers. Currently uninstalling them to see if Wayland is starting using nouveau...
Thanks.
What else do you need from me?

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 17.10
Package: gnome-control-center 1:3.26.1-0ubuntu4
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.13.0-16.19-generic 4.13.4
Uname: Linux 4.13.0-16-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia_uvm nvidia_drm nvidia_modeset nvidia
ApportVersion: 2.20.7-0ubuntu3
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: ubuntu:GNOME
Date: Fri Oct 20 20:20:04 2017
InstallationDate: Installed on 2016-11-27 (327 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 16.04.1 LTS "Xenial Xerus" - Release amd64 (20160719)
SourcePackage: gnome-control-center
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to artful on 2017-10-19 (0 days ago)

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Ohto (ohto)]

Dell E6540 with AMD graphics, same thing for me. Works fine with 17.04. Also, now I cannot enable both two finger scrolling and edgescrolling. Everything else (mouse, window sidescroll, arrow down) scrolls down when used, but not touchpad. Damn frustrating.

[Christian González (droetker)]

I recently installed Debian 9 with GNOME, it worked perfectly there. Upgraded to testing, keeped working. I don't know why Ubuntu is broken here, maybe just check the patch diff to debian. Must be there somewhere?

Again - how can I help here further?

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Hi Christian,

I've just checked and toggling "Natural Scrolling" does work on touchpads for other people such as myself. You might want to check if the "Natural Scrolling" option is listed under "Touchpad" or under "Mouse". Make sure you set the one under "Touchpad".

If that doesn't fix it then the issue is probably that Ubuntu is mistaking your touchpad for a mouse. So the relevant configuration options you need for "Touchpad" may be missing, or may be misinterpreted.

Please start by providing a screenshot of your Mouse & Touchpad settings. And also you might want to try downgrading your Ubuntu kernel to 4.9 or earlier (so it's more like Debian 9):
  kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/?C=N;O=D
If Ubuntu is mistaking your touchpad for a mouse then that might fix it.

[Christian González (droetker)]

Yes, true, I can see that the touchpad is not detected as own device - so all the settings apply to the mouse AND the (not separated) touchpad.
So the real problem is that thetouchpad is not properly detected.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

OK, then that's either a kernel bug or libinput.

The kernel discussion will happen here. But in case it's a libinput bug then please also report the problem here:
  https://bugs.freedesktop.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=wayland&component=libinput

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Please also try other kernel versions and tell us if some older or newer kernel fixes the problem for you:
  http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/?C=N;O=D

[Christian González (droetker)]

I just tested it using the bionic live image (couple of days old) - there it works perfectly, with the kernel 4.15. Maybe it's the 17.10 kernel - can't test it as I went back to 16.04 by now.