[Hardy] Synaptics touchpad vertical scroll (middle button) not working as expected

[Peter Schneider]

Binary package hint: xserver-xorg-input-synaptics

Hello,

I have a brand new laptop, Acer 7720G. I installed Hardy beta, and have applied all updates as of today. I found a minor glitch with the touchpad. The middle button is a 4-way scroll button. However the vertical scroll function behaves in the opposite way as expected: when I press the lower edge, it scrolls up, and when I press the upper edge, it scrolls down. I dual-boot Hardy with Win Vista which came pre-installed and which I admittedly did not wipe out yet ;-) In Vista it works the other way round which seems more reasonable. dmesg says the touchpad is an ALPS PS/2 glide point, in the installer generated xorg.conf it uses the synaptics driver. I reviewed the other synaptics LP entries but haven't seen a similar report, so I think this is new.

I use a USB mouse in parallel which works fine. I can plug the mouse out and in and both the touchpad and the mouse work fine except for this touchpad scroll issue. It also does not matter if the mouse is not plugged in when X starts up.

Here are the version numbers:

ps@pascal:~$ lsb_release -rd
Description: Ubuntu hardy (development branch)
Release: 8.04
ps@pascal:~$ uname -a
Linux pascal 2.6.24-15-generic #1 SMP Mon Apr 7 16:37:53 UTC 2008 x86_64 GNU/Linux
ps@pascal:~$ apt-cache policy xserver-xorg-input-synaptics
xserver-xorg-input-synaptics:
  Installiert:0.14.7~git20070706-1ubuntu4
  Mögliche Pakete:0.14.7~git20070706-1ubuntu4
  Versions-Tabelle:
 *** 0.14.7~git20070706-1ubuntu4 0
        500 http://de.archive.ubuntu.com hardy/main Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
ps@pascal:~$

Will attach more information.

Thanks
Peter

[Peter Schneider (ps-euler)]

Ok, in addition to the above xorg.conf, I added Option "SHMConfig" "On" to provide this output of synclient -l. I hope anybody can help with this issue.

Thanks and regards
Peter

[Peter Schneider (ps-euler)]

The bug is still present after Hardy Release.

[misteraph (laporte-raphael)]

Same problem on my acer 5315.
The scroll button between the left and right mouse button on the touchpad are reverse (up scrolls down, down scrolls up).

[Pierre-Yves Langlois (pyl-regis)]

Hello...

I resolved my vertical scrollbar bar problem by adding the line ""InputDevice "Synaptics Touchpad" "" to the ServerLayout section:

Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier "Layout0"
    Screen 0 "Screen0"
    InputDevice "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
    InputDevice "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
    InputDevice "Synaptics Touchpad"
EndSection

Hope this helps!

[William Grant (wgrant)]

Can you try this with intrepid alpha 5, please?

[Peter Schneider (ps-euler)]

I have tried alpha 3 from a preview live CD and this has:

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ apt-cache policy xserver-xorg-input-synaptics
xserver-xorg-input-synaptics:
  Installed: 0.14.7~git20070706-2.1ubuntu2
  Candidate: 0.14.7~git20070706-2.1ubuntu2
  Version table:
 *** 0.14.7~git20070706-2.1ubuntu2 0
        500 http://archive.ubuntu.com intrepid/main Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

and it doesn't work at all. Down is "Back" in Firefox, and both Down and Up doesn't seem to do anything in other apps, e.g. gedit or OO Writer.

Is there a newer version of the synaptics driver in alpha 5? If yes I'll download, burn it and give it a try but the above output makes me think there is no newer one...

[Peter Schneider (ps-euler)]

Oops, sorry for the noise - only after checking for updates in the live session I saw that new version 15.2 is available, so I'll check alpha 5 and give feedback. Just wanted to avoid the big download and tried the a3 CD from a magazine...

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ apt-cache policy xserver-xorg-input-synaptics
xserver-xorg-input-synaptics:
  Installed: 0.14.7~git20070706-2.1ubuntu2
  Candidate: 0.15.2-0ubuntu2
  Version table:
     0.15.2-0ubuntu2 0
        500 http://archive.ubuntu.com intrepid/main Packages
 *** 0.14.7~git20070706-2.1ubuntu2 0
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

[Peter Schneider (ps-euler)]

OK, just downloaded and booted Intrepid alpha 6, and with this driver version, all works well!

xserver-xorg-input-synaptics:
  Installed: 0.15.2-0ubuntu1

Any chance there will be a backport for Hardy?

Regards
Peter

[Ante Karamatić (ivoks)]

I would like to add that after upgrade to Ubuntu 8.10Beta, all ALPS/Synaptics functions (scrolling, middle button, etc...) stopped working.

[William Grant (wgrant)]

ivoks, does it work if you remove the touchpad section from your xorg.conf? If not, post lshal and Xorg logs.

[Ante Karamatić (ivoks)]

Yes, that solved the issue.

[William Grant (wgrant)]

William Grant wrote:
> ivoks, does it work if you remove the touchpad section from your
> xorg.conf? If not, post lshal and Xorg logs.

After discussion on IRC, removing this xorg.conf snippet worked:

Section "InputDevice"
 Identifier "Synaptics Touchpad"
 Driver "synaptics"
 Option "SendCoreEvents" "true"
 Option "Device" "/dev/psaux"
 Option "Protocol" "auto-dev"
 Option "HorizEdgeScroll" "0"
EndSection

It's apparently the default for Hardy.

--
William Grant