Under both the live CD and an HDD-based installation, the touchpad and keyboard on my Compaq Presario V5000 will often randomly become erratic; attempts to move the mouse pointer will incur random jumping of the mouse pointer, or phantom right or left clicks. This effect will come and go apparently randomly. Also, I'm seeing similar issues with the keyboard; e.g. typing letters may work, but TAB/CTRL+character won't or vice-versa.
I see messages from the kernel like:
Dec 31 00:53:00 taw kernel: [ 87.924490] psmouse.c: issuing reconnect request
Dec 31 00:53:08 taw kernel: [ 95.916392] psmouse.c: TouchPad at isa0060/serio4/input0 lost sync at byte 4
Dec 31 00:53:08 taw kernel: [ 95.930516] psmouse.c: TouchPad at isa0060/serio4/input0 lost sync at byte 4
Dec 31 00:53:08 taw kernel: [ 95.932620] psmouse.c: TouchPad at isa0060/serio4/input0 lost sync at byte 1
Dec 31 00:53:08 taw kernel: [ 95.934505] psmouse.c: TouchPad at isa0060/serio4/input0 lost sync at byte 1
Dec 31 00:53:08 taw kernel: [ 95.935848] psmouse.c: TouchPad at isa0060/serio4/input0 lost sync at byte 1
Dec 31 00:53:08 taw kernel: [ 95.935851] psmouse.c: issuing reconnect request
I found some potentially relevant threads:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=134123&page=2
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=713676
... and ended up adding "i8042.reset i8042.nomux" to the kernel command-line, which appears to have fixed it.
Note that various Fedora versions (I think in the 8..10 range; I can look up the most recent version if required) did not require those parameters, so this appears to be a kernel regression. I have a live CD for at least Jaunty, so can check older Ubuntu versions too if required.
This bug was filed against a series that is no longer supported and so is being marked as Won't Fix. If this issue still exists in a supported series, please file a new bug.
This change has been made by an automated script, maintained by the Ubuntu Kernel Team.