[9.04 Beta] - Hotkey for deactivating touchpad not working

[Emilien Klein]

Binary package hint: hal-info

As in 8.10, the key that is supposed to deactivate the touchpad on my Compaq Presario CQ70 is not working in 9.04 Beta. This key is located just above the touchpad, and when activated should deactivate the touchpad. The color of the button is white, and when pressed changes to red/orange, but apart of this color change, it has no effect.

I have followed the directions on https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Hotkeys/Troubleshooting and went until step 9. This is the output I get from sudo input-events 4:

[code]
sudo input-events 4
/dev/input/event4
   bustype : BUS_I8042
   vendor : 0x1
   product : 0x1
   version : 43841
   name : "AT Translated Set 2 keyboard"
   phys : "isa0060/serio0/input0"
   bits ev : EV_SYN EV_KEY EV_MSC EV_LED EV_REP

waiting for events
22:11:35.630829: EV_MSC code=4 value=156
22:11:35.630847: EV_KEY KEY_KPENTER (0x60) released
22:11:35.630850: EV_SYN code=0 value=0
22:11:37.473023: EV_MSC code=4 value=216
22:11:37.473056: EV_SYN code=0 value=0
22:11:37.479393: EV_MSC code=4 value=216
22:11:37.479420: EV_SYN code=0 value=0
22:11:40.252551: EV_MSC code=4 value=217
22:11:40.252573: EV_KEY KEY_HELP (0x8a) pressed
22:11:40.252580: EV_SYN code=0 value=0
22:11:40.259384: EV_MSC code=4 value=217
22:11:40.259405: EV_KEY KEY_HELP (0x8a) released
[/code]

What I conclude from this are 2 things:
- when pressing the key the first time (deactivated -> activated), the key is recognized as 216 and has an unknown symbolic key name
- however when pressing it for the second time, it is recognized as 217 and has the name of "EV_KEY KEY_HELP"

Oh, and by the way, xev detects kind of the same behavior: The fist time the key is pressed, nothing happens, but the second time it is detected as keycode 146:
[code]
xev | sed -n 's/^.*state \([0-9].*\), keycode *\([0-9]\+\) *\(.*\), .*$/keycode \2 = \3, state = \1/p'
keycode 146 = (keysym 0xff6a, Help), state = 0x10
keycode 146 = (keysym 0xff6a, Help), state = 0x10
[/code]

Does anyone have an idea how to fix this?

I have attached all the recommended Useful Information:

hal-find-by-capability --capability input | xargs -n1 lshal -u > lshal.log
lshal |grep system.hardware > lshal_hardware.log
dmesg > dmesg.log
sudo lsinput > lsinput.log
xkbcomp -xkb :0 - > xkbcomp.txt
setxkbmap -print > xkbmap.txt

Note: xkbcomp -xkb :0 generated the following warning message:
Warning: Could not load keyboard geometry for :0
                  BadAlloc (insufficient resources for operation)
                  Resulting keymap file will not describe geometry

Thanks,
Emilien.

P.S.: This is my first bug report, I hope to have included all the necessary information! Please tell me if you need more.

lsb_release -rd
Description: Ubuntu jaunty (development branch)
Release: 9.04

apt-cache policy hal-info
hal-info:
  Installé : 20090324-0ubuntu1
  Candidat : 20090324-0ubuntu1
 Table de version :
 *** 20090324-0ubuntu1 0
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com jaunty/main Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

[Emilien Klein (emilien-klein)]

Note to self: http://people.freedesktop.org/~hughsient/quirk/quirk-keymap-index.html should have all the necessary information to resolve this.

[Emilien Klein (emilien-klein)]

So I've followed the instructions from the above link, and I've added the following to /usr/share/hal/fdi/information/10freedesktop/30-keymap-hp.fdi :

   <match key="/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/computer:system.hardware.product" contains="CQ70">
            <!-- The Compaq Presario CQ70 has a touchpad disable button -->
            <append key="input.keymap.data" type="strlist">e058:f22</append> <!-- Touchpad toggle (on-to-off) -->
            <append key="input.keymap.data" type="strlist">e059:f22</append> <!-- Touchpad toggle (off-to-on) -->
   </match>

Now the key is seen from xev, both on the first and second "click". However, I still have a problem...
This is what is returned by:
xev | sed -n 's/^.*state \([0-9].*\), keycode *\([0-9]\+\) *\(.*\), .*$/keycode \2 = \3, state = \1/p'
keycode 200 = (keysym 0x0, NoSymbol), state = 0x10
keycode 200 = (keysym 0x0, NoSymbol), state = 0x10
keycode 200 = (keysym 0x0, NoSymbol), state = 0x10
keycode 200 = (keysym 0x0, NoSymbol), state = 0x10

I see that the keysym is 0x0, which does not seem to be nice.

And there is something strange:
When I configure the keyboard shortcuts (from System -> keyboard shortcuts) and I create a new shortcut (for the command "firefox", for example), pressing the key does not produce anything. However, if I associate this key with "Launch help browser", the help browser gets called... I must admit that I am a bit surprised by this!

Would anyone have an idea how to associate this key to the script /etc/acpi/asus-touchpad.sh (which takes care of deactivating the touchpad once you have enabled SHMConfig: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SynapticsTouchpad#shmconfig)

[Emilien Klein (emilien-klein)]

So on Sunday, April 5th 2009 I sent a patch to <email address hidden> I hope it will be considered. I include it here to this ticket, if anyone wants it. The only thing that is still strange is that the key is recognized with a 0x0 keysym and NoSymbol. I don't know if this is a problem...

[Emilien Klein (emilien-klein)]

Closing it, as it was for 9.04 Beta. From what I've read hal is getting deprecated anyway...
BTW, I've never had any feedback on the patch I had sent...