[Thinkpad Yoga 460] trackpoint slow and hard to move

[Carlo Maragno]

Hi there,

I just got around installing Ubuntu 17.10, on my Thinkpad yoga 460 and track-point is no longer usable.
The default speed is atrociously slow and to make matter worse it doesn't seem to be affected by the mouse speed settings settings.

I searched for solution on the net, but they all point to editing some files [1] that on my machine can't be found.

Booting windows 10 or an old ubuntu (like 14.04) the trackpoint works fine.

Cheers,
Carlo

[1] https://askubuntu.com/questions/596085/increase-trackpoint-sensititvity-with-systemd-ubuntu-15-04-or-later

If I ll on /sys/devices/platform/i8042/serio1/ i get:
```
serio1 ll
total 0
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4,0K nov 18 15:39 bind_mode
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4,0K nov 18 15:39 crc_enabled
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4,0K nov 18 15:39 debug
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 4,0K nov 18 15:39 description
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 nov 17 14:28 driver -> ../../../../bus/serio/drivers/psmouse
--w------- 1 root root 4,0K nov 18 15:39 drvctl
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 4,0K nov 18 15:39 firmware_id
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 0 nov 17 14:28 id
drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 0 nov 17 14:28 input
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 4,0K nov 18 15:39 modalias
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4,0K nov 18 15:39 paritycheck
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 0 nov 18 15:39 power
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4,0K nov 18 15:39 protocol
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4,0K nov 18 15:39 rate
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4,0K nov 18 15:39 reg_07
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4,0K nov 18 15:39 reg_10
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4,0K nov 18 15:39 reg_11
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4,0K nov 18 15:39 reg_20
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4,0K nov 18 15:39 reg_21
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4,0K nov 18 15:39 reg_22
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4,0K nov 18 15:39 reg_23
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4,0K nov 18 15:39 reg_24
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4,0K nov 18 15:39 reg_25
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4,0K nov 18 15:39 reg_26
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4,0K nov 18 15:39 resetafter
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4,0K nov 18 15:39 resolution
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4,0K nov 18 15:39 resync_time
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 nov 17 14:28 subsystem -> ../../../../bus/serio
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4,0K nov 17 14:28 uevent
```

[Carlo Maragno (ste-maragno)]

Hello folks,

I've managed to get the trackpoint to a usable state by doing the following steps:

1- I've compiled libinput from the git repo as the one that comes with linux is old and a I think doesn't have the fix that is needed.

2- I've created a new rules in the udev database like this:

sudo cat /etc/udev/hwdb.d/71-pointingstick-local.hwdb

evdev:name:*ETPS/2\ Elantech\ TrackPoint:dmi:bvn*:bvr*:bd*:svn*:pn*:pvr*:*
 LIBINPUT_ATTR_TRACKPOINT_RANGE=15

3- I've reloaded the udev db with udevadm hwdb -u and rebooted the system.

4- Profit

Here you find some interesting links that talk about the issue:
https://wayland.freedesktop.org/libinput/doc/latest/pointer-acceleration.html
https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/5902
https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=91369 [which according to ff57 is a "badware" site]
https://wayland.freedesktop.org/libinput/doc/latest/building_libinput.html

Have a nice day, with a working trackpoint
Carlo

[Carlo Maragno (ste-maragno)]

Oh btw I forgot to say that you can get LIBINPUT_ATTR_TRACKPOINT_RANGE by using sudo evtest /dev/input/event6 with your device and seeing the maximum value that you get while moving the cursor around.

Cheers

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Hi Carlo,

We would like for Ubuntu to "just work" out of the box for you in future. This means ensuring a fix exists upstream.

It sounds like you might have hit https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=91369 which is fixed in libinput 1.9 apparently. So please try that by booting Ubuntu 18.04 from here:
  http://cdimages.ubuntu.com/daily-live/current/

[Carlo Maragno (ste-maragno)]

Hi Daniel, close but no cigar.

I compiled libinput from master, and there are some improvements but the situation for this laptop is not solved. It appears that this model, and probably all of Elantech TrackPoints, require some custom acceleration routines as per https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=98689#c10

It should be mentioned that the fix that I proposed above with the new libinput relase is no necessary and will only make the trackpoint more jerky.

Have a nice day,
Carlo

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[snow (mrauschert)]

From my side I would like to add:

* On my Lenovo Thinkpad T495 the TrackPoint acceleration is not optimal (compared to Win10)
* TrackPoint is hard to move and if you make it faster then the acceleration is too fast
* Separate settings only for TrackPoint sensivity are missing
* My other machine is HP Elitebook 8570p. The TP is very slow there. Not really fun to work with it, either
* It would be good it somebody coud look at it as I assume that the problem exists at least on most of Thinkpads and HP machines with trackpoints and for several years already
* I do not see it as a small "cosmetic" problem, but as a basic system seeting allowing to use TrackPoint at all.

[Martin Leopold (martin-leopold)]

Hi,
On my HP EliteBook 840 G2 I'm seeing the same issue. I saw the issue on Ubuntu 20.04, but upgrading to 20.10 made no difference. It was suggested[1] to switch to the 'evdev' input driver. So I installed the 'xserver-xorg-input-evdev' package and added the following file:

/usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/5-trackpoint.conf
Section "InputClass"
        Identifier "evdev trackpoint"
        MatchIsPointer "on"
        MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*"
        MatchProduct "PS/2 Generic Mouse"
        Driver "evdev"
EndSection

This seems to make my tracpoint usable again.

- Martin

[1] https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=217136

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

We really should have a separate bug for each model of touchpad/laptop. Because the fixes for these issues are usually specific to each model.

Martin, please open a new bug for your laptop.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Thank you for reporting this bug to Ubuntu.
Ubuntu 17.10 (artful) reached end-of-life on July 19, 2018.

See this document for currently supported Ubuntu releases:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases

We appreciate that this bug may be old and you might not be interested in discussing it any more. But if you are then please upgrade to the latest Ubuntu version and re-test. If you then find the bug is still present in the newer Ubuntu version, please add a comment here telling us which new version it is in.

[snow (mrauschert)]

Sorry, I menat this solution (te previuos link was to general):

https://askubuntu.com/a/1291645/937611

[snow (mrauschert)]

pls delete my previous post above. it was wrong here.