ALPS touchpad recognized as generic PS/2 mouse

[Stephen Sanner]

On my Dell Precision M4500 with Ubuntu maverick, my touchpad (which is an Alps device) is recognized as a generic PS/2 mouse. I cannot adjust touchpad sensitivity (since it recognizes as a mouse) and touchpad scrolling does not work. However, the pointing stick works perfectly, as does tap-to-click on the touchpad. This seems to be a very similar bug to that reported here (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/330885) but the fix does not work in my case. I also have a Logitech unifying receiver wireless mouse on the computer but removing the unifying receiver has no effect on the bug.

Linux 2.6.35-28-generic-pae #50-Ubuntu SMP Fri Mar 18 20:43:15 UTC 2011 i686 GNU/Linux

The pertinent part of cat /proc/bus/input/devices is:
I: Bus=0011 Vendor=0002 Product=0001 Version=0000
N: Name="PS/2 Generic Mouse"
P: Phys=isa0060/serio1/input0
S: Sysfs=/devices/platform/i8042/serio1/input/input13
U: Uniq=
H: Handlers=mouse1 event13
B: EV=7
B: KEY=70000 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
B: REL=3

So Linux recognizes the pointing stick and the touchpad as one device: a generic PS/2 mouse.

[Marja Erwin (marja-e)]

I have a similar bug on a used Sony Vaio E-series. In this case, there is no stick; the system reads the touchpad as a PS/2 mouse and it is impossible to adjust sensitivity or disable tapping. It is sensitive enough that I have enabled a hotkey to disable the entire touchpad and enable typing, but when I need to move the cursor, it is liable to randomly click on anything in its path; when I attempt to type without using the hotkey, it is liable to move the cursor location as I'm typing.

It occurred in both Maverick and Natty; I reinstalled Maverick in the course of attempting to resolve the bug.

[Brad Figg (brad-figg)]

This bug is missing log files that will aid in dianosing the problem. From a terminal window please run:

apport-collect 762033

and then change the status of the bug back to 'New'.

If, due to the nature of the issue you have encountered, you are unable to run this command, please add a comment stating that fact and change the bug status to 'Confirmed'.

This change has been made by an automated script, maintained by the Ubuntu Kernel Team.