ALPS touchpad on HP doesn't work properly, only with PS/2 emulation

[Ketil Malde]

Binary package hint: xserver-xorg-input-synaptics

I have HP Pavillion dm1 (1030s or something), with an ALPS touchpad. The touchpad has never been correctly identified, but it provides a ps2 mouse emulation, which has worked. The sensitivity is horrible, but I've learned to live with that. Upgrading to natty, edge scrolling and emulate3buttons disappeared, so I thought I'd investigate.

The current situation is as follows:

'modprobe psmouse' module gives (in dmesg):

[351174.694720] input: PS/2 Mouse as /devices/platform/i8042/serio1/input/input23
[351174.719260] input: AlpsPS/2 ALPS GlidePoint as /devices/platform/i8042/serio1/input/input24

'xinput list':
⎜ ↳ PS/2 Mouse id=15 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ AlpsPS/2 ALPS GlidePoint id=16 [slave pointer (2)]

After enabling ShmConfig in /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/, I can run 'synclient -m 1':
    time x y z f w l r u d m multi gl gm gr gdx gdy
   0.000 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 00000000

...but nothing further happens, even if I move the pointer around with the touchpad or click buttons, etc.

So that's where it stands. How can I configure the touchpad so that it is visible, and I can configure things like sensitivity?

(The edge scroll issue can be fixed by giving the psmouse module the options proto=imps, see
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/737051/comments/2)

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[Hemanti (henrikmarcel)]

Same for me on a HP Pavilion dm4-2000sg on Natty and Oneiric. Difference is, the workaround provided doesn't work here.

[Daniel Graziano (smastic888)]

The workaround also does not work for me, I also have an HP Pavilion dm4. I find it strange that synclient -m does not output any useful data at all, but the Alps pad is still present and recognized in the xinput list. Are there any other related bugs to this one?

[Michael Berg (jaykaycgn)]

isn't this the same bug as https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xserver-xorg-input-synaptics/+bug/747092 ?

[penalvch (penalvch)]

Ketil Malde, this bug was reported a while ago and there hasn't been any activity in it recently. We were wondering if this is still an issue? If so, could you please test for this with the latest development release of Ubuntu? ISO images are available from http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/daily-live/current/ .

If it remains an issue, could you please run the following command in the development release from a Terminal (Applications->Accessories->Terminal), as it will automatically gather and attach updated debug information to this report:

apport-collect -p xserver-xorg-input-synaptics REPLACE-WITH-BUG-NUMBER

Please note, given that the information from the prior release is already available, doing this on a release prior to the development one would not be helpful.

Thank you for your understanding.

Helpful bug reporting tips:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ReportingBugs

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for xserver-xorg-input-synaptics (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]