Acer Aspire ES1-311-C9XM - Synaptics ClickPad soft buttons not configured out of the box

[Li-aung Yip ("Lewis")]

The Acer ES1-311-C9XM is equipped with a Synaptics 'ClickPad', i.e. a touchpad with integrated 'click' button.

The default settings assume that the ClickPad is just a normal touchpad with a single hardware mouse button. Basic touchpad functionality is OK. Multitouch features such as two-finger-tap to right-click, and two-finger-swipe to scroll, do work.

However, clicking and dragging with the hardware click button, and right-clicking with the hardware click button, do not work.

`xinput --list` reports the touchpad as `SYN1B7F:01 06CB:2991 UNKNOWN`.

Tweaking settings using `synclient` can fix the problem. For example, to set up the bottom right-hand corner of the touchpad as the software right-click button, we can do the following at a command line:

synclient ClickPad=1
synclient RightButtonAreaLeft=610 RightButtonAreaRight=1175 RightButtonAreaTop=489 RightButtonAreaBottom=648

(This configuration is not perfect, and does not persist between reboots - `xorg.conf` editing probably needed for that.)

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 14.10
Package: xserver-xorg-input-synaptics 1.8.1-1ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.16.0-23.31-generic 3.16.4
Uname: Linux 3.16.0-23-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.14.7-0ubuntu8.2
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: XFCE
Date: Tue Mar 17 23:40:41 2015
InstallationDate: Installed on 2015-03-16 (0 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Xubuntu 14.10 "Utopic Unicorn" - Release amd64 (20141022.1)
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=en_AU:en
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=<set>
 LANG=en_AU.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: xserver-xorg-input-synaptics
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Li-aung Yip ("Lewis") (littleweseth)]

Output of `synclient` before any tweaks are applied

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[Li-aung Yip ("Lewis") (littleweseth)]

This bug can be worked around by doing the following:

1. > mkdir /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d
2. > cp /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-synaptics.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/
3. Edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-synaptics.conf to look like the file reproduced below. This sets up the bottom 25% of the touchpad as "soft buttons". The left button takes up 40% of this space, the middle button takes up 20%, and the right button takes up 40%.

After performing this fix, I am able to perform left and middle clicks, left-click and drag, middle-click-and-drag, and right-click-and-drag using the touchpad.

Note - this Acer ES1-311-C9XM also suffers the "touchpad not working after suspend/resume" bug as in https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/1393079 . The fix given in comment #7 of that bug fixes that issue.

----

# Example xorg.conf.d snippet that assigns the touchpad driver
# to all touchpads. See xorg.conf.d(5) for more information on
# InputClass.
# DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE, your distribution will likely overwrite
# it when updating. Copy (and rename) this file into
# /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d first.
# Additional options may be added in the form of
# Option "OptionName" "value"
#
Section "InputClass"
        Identifier "touchpad catchall"
        Driver "synaptics"
        MatchIsTouchpad "on"
# This option is recommend on all Linux systems using evdev, but cannot be
# enabled by default. See the following link for details:
# http://who-t.blogspot.com/2010/11/how-to-ignore-configuration-errors.html
      MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*"

# [lws 2015-03-19 - options for configuring ClickPad on Acer ES1-311-C9XM]

 Option "ClickPad" "true"
 Option "EmulateMidButtonTime" "0"
 Option "SoftButtonAreas" "60% 0 75% 0 40% 60% 75% 0"
 Option "AreaBottomEdge" "75%"

EndSection

Section "InputClass"
        Identifier "touchpad ignore duplicates"
        MatchIsTouchpad "on"
        MatchOS "Linux"
        MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/mouse*"
        Option "Ignore" "on"
EndSection

# This option enables the bottom right corner to be a right button on clickpads
# and the right and middle top areas to be right / middle buttons on clickpads
# with a top button area.
# This option is only interpreted by clickpads.
#
# [lws 2015-03-19 Comment out this section to avoid scrobbling settings we have configured above]
#
# Section "InputClass"
# Identifier "Default clickpad buttons"
# MatchDriver "synaptics"
# Option "SoftButtonAreas" "50% 0 82% 0 0 0 0 0"
# Option "SecondarySoftButtonAreas" "58% 0 0 15% 42% 58% 0 15%"
# EndSection

# This option disables software buttons on Apple touchpads.
# This option is only interpreted by clickpads.
Section "InputClass"
        Identifier "Disable clickpad buttons on Apple touchpads"
        MatchProduct "Apple|bcm5974"
        MatchDriver "synaptics"
        Option "SoftButtonAreas" "0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0"
EndSection

----

[Li-aung Yip ("Lewis") (littleweseth)]

Finally, relevant to debugging - I see the following in the dmesg logs on startup:

lws@daedalus:~$ dmesg | grep i2c
[ 11.983106] i2c_hid i2c-SYN1B7F:01: failed to retrieve report from device.
[ 11.991460] i2c_hid i2c-SYN1B7F:01: failed to retrieve report from device.
[ 11.992128] i2c_hid i2c-SYN1B7F:01: failed to retrieve report from device.
[ 11.992955] i2c_hid i2c-SYN1B7F:01: failed to retrieve report from device.
[ 11.994997] i2c_hid i2c-SYN1B7F:01: failed to retrieve report from device.
[ 11.995212] input: SYN1B7F:01 06CB:2991 UNKNOWN as /devices/platform/80860F41:00/i2c-0/i2c-SYN1B7F:01/0018:06CB:2991.0002/input/input9
lws@daedalus:~$

[penalvch (penalvch)]

Li-aung Yip ("Lewis"), thank you for reporting this and helping make Ubuntu better.

As per https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases your release is EOL.

If you have an issue in a supported release (ex. 16.04) please file a new report, and feel free to subscribe me to it.