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Bug #775790
Comment #10

Comment 10 for bug 775790

Revision history for this message

Adam B Butler (adambbutler) wrote on 2011-05-31:

#10

I have one of these devices (an E6510 w/ ALPS trackpad) and I can confirm this intermittent behavior. (Or perhaps it should be "intermittently confirm"?)

When the trackpad works, none of this behavior is present. It either works fine...or it goes absolutely insane, as the OP described. I *have* observed a short "transition period" where the mouse is going from "works fine" to "insane mode;" essentially the mouse (or rather, the cursor on the screen) will begin to "drift" several millimeters upward on the screen, over the course of several seconds. If I place my finger on the trackpad and adjust the cursor (move it back to where it was, etc) I can get it to move a little bit, but the moment my finger leaves the trackpad the cursor moves (much quicker this time) back to wherever it was.

I've found that this "transition period" lasts for a few minutes...less than five. It's just enough time to use the track-stick (which tends to work OK during this period) to save my work and shut down the machine. As far as I can tell, resuming from hibernation or suspend simply restores the same erratic state of the trackpad.... I have to shut the machine completely down and power cycle in order to "fix" the problem.

The OP described the problem as "trackpad goes insane" -- and that's fairly appropriate. I mean, efforts to move the mouse cursor 2cm to the left can result in the cursor jumping/teleporting itself to the top right corner of the screen, clicking-and-dragging the entire way there. It becomes impossible to shut down the machine (without using keyboard shortcuts) because maneuvering to a specific spot, and actually selecting an item from a drop-down menu is impossible at that point. It's much more likely that I will resize/close windows containing unsaved data, or inadvertantly click-drag some item (like the system menu, or main menu bar) halfway across the screen, or... etc.

As to what causes "good trackpads to go bad," I haven't a clue. My uneducated best-guess opinion is that *maybe* high system load (or the heat resulting from said system load) is a factor -- because as far as I can recall, the "transformation" has always happened when I had a large number of applications running, producing enough heat that the system's fan was loud enough to hear (it is usually fairly silent) and warm to the touch. Honestly it is hard to do much in the way of troubleshooting (during one of these "flareups") because the mouse cursor is constantly working against me. :) The best I've been able to do is ALT+Tab to a terminal window and page through "dmesg" output -- which has never provided anything useful. (no error messages, etc)

Since there is no "application crash" per se, I have no dumpfile to attach... nor any specific error logs to add to the conversation. I'll happily provide any info that is required to help troubleshoot this -- just kindly let me know what you need.

Thanks! -ab

---

$ uname -a
Linux oof 2.6.38-9-generic #43-Ubuntu SMP Thu Apr 28 15:23:06 UTC 2011 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

I have one of these devices (an E6510 w/ ALPS trackpad) and I can confirm this intermittent behavior.  (Or perhaps it should be "intermittently confirm"?)

When the trackpad works, none of this behavior is present.  It either works fine...or it goes absolutely insane, as the OP described.  I *have* observed a short "transition period" where the mouse is going from "works fine" to "insane mode;" essentially the mouse (or rather, the cursor on the screen) will begin to "drift" several millimeters upward on the screen, over the course of several seconds.   If I place my finger on the trackpad and adjust the cursor (move it back to where it was, etc) I can get it to move a little bit, but the moment my finger leaves the trackpad the cursor moves (much quicker this time) back to wherever it was.

I've found that this "transition period" lasts for a few minutes...less than five.  It's just enough time to use the track-stick (which tends to work OK during this period) to save my work and shut down the machine.  As far as I can tell, resuming from hibernation or suspend simply restores the same erratic state of the trackpad....  I have to shut the machine completely down and power cycle in order to "fix" the problem.

The OP described the problem as "trackpad goes insane" -- and that's fairly appropriate.  I mean, efforts to move the mouse cursor 2cm to the left can result in the cursor jumping/teleporting itself to the top right corner of the screen, clicking-and-dragging the entire way there.  It becomes impossible to shut down the machine (without using keyboard shortcuts) because maneuvering to a specific spot, and actually selecting an item from a drop-down menu is impossible at that point.  It's much more likely that I will resize/close windows containing unsaved data, or inadvertantly click-drag some item (like the system menu, or main menu bar) halfway across the screen, or... etc.

As to what causes "good trackpads to go bad," I haven't a clue.  My uneducated best-guess opinion is that *maybe* high system load (or the heat resulting from said system load) is a factor -- because as far as I can recall, the "transformation" has always happened when I had a large number of applications running, producing enough heat that the system's fan was loud enough to hear (it is usually fairly silent) and warm to the touch.  Honestly it is hard to do much in the way of troubleshooting (during one of these "flareups") because the mouse cursor is constantly working against me. :)    The best I've been able to do is ALT+Tab to a terminal window and page through "dmesg" output -- which has never provided anything useful.  (no error messages, etc)

Since there is no "application crash" per se, I have no dumpfile to attach...  nor any specific error logs to add to the conversation.  I'll happily provide any info that is required to help troubleshoot this -- just kindly let me know what you need.

Thanks!  -ab

---

$ uname -a 
Linux oof 2.6.38-9-generic #43-Ubuntu SMP Thu Apr 28 15:23:06 UTC 2011 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

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Comment 10 for bug 775790

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