Regression: Touchpad always stops working on precise iff syndaemon is started

[Axel Beckert]

While syndaemon and synclient worked fine in Oneiric, I had to disable syndaemon in Precise because shortly after starting syndaemon (via ~/.xsession), the touchpad (and its buttons) stopped working, i.e. I had no more means to move the mouse cursor.

Commenting just the later synclient call in my .xsession didn't help, so it seems unrelated to the used settings. Pressing the F9 button to enable/disable the touchpad showed no effect either.

The very same configuration works fine on at least two Debian Sid netbooks (both ASUS EeePC, but different generations) and worked fine on the same hardware with Ubuntu Oneiric, so the source for this issue must be either the different hardware (Toshiba AC100, an ARM netbook) plus the newer package or some new difference between Ubuntu Precise (1.5.99.902-0ubuntu5) and Ubuntu Oneiric (1.4.1-1ubuntu2) or Debian Sid (1.5.99.902-1).

Since all other "touchpad stopped working" bug reports claim that it happens more often with precise than with oneiric, I think this is another issue as it always worked with oneiric and never worked with precise in my case.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 12.04
Package: xserver-xorg-input-synaptics 1.5.99.902-0ubuntu5
Uname: Linux 3.0.19-2-ac100 armv7l
ApportVersion: 2.0.1-0ubuntu2
Architecture: armel
Date: Sat Apr 14 09:39:29 2012
DistUpgraded: 2012-04-10 19:19:11,523 DEBUG enabling apt cron job
DistroCodename: precise
DistroVariant: ubuntu
ProcEnviron:
 TERM=xterm-256color
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/zsh
ProcKernelCmdLine: mem=448M@0M lp0_vec=0x2000@0x1c29e000 tegrapart=recovery:300:a00:800,boot:d00:1000:800,mbr:1d00:200:800 root=UUID=cebda71d-bace-4bc4-adb7-0b48b7b04da7
SourcePackage: xserver-xorg-input-synaptics
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to precise on 2012-04-10 (3 days ago)
version.compiz: compiz 1:0.9.7.6-0ubuntu1
version.libdrm2: libdrm2 2.4.32-1ubuntu1
version.libgl1-mesa-dri: libgl1-mesa-dri 8.0.2-0ubuntu3
version.libgl1-mesa-dri-experimental: libgl1-mesa-dri-experimental N/A
version.libgl1-mesa-glx: libgl1-mesa-glx 8.0.2-0ubuntu3
version.xserver-xorg-core: xserver-xorg-core 2:1.11.4-0ubuntu10
version.xserver-xorg-input-evdev: xserver-xorg-input-evdev 1:2.7.0-0ubuntu1
version.xserver-xorg-video-ati: xserver-xorg-video-ati 1:6.14.99~git20111219.aacbd629-0ubuntu2
version.xserver-xorg-video-intel: xserver-xorg-video-intel N/A
version.xserver-xorg-video-nouveau: xserver-xorg-video-nouveau N/A

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[Axel Beckert (xtaran)]

Hi,

Ahmed Shams wrote:
> - Regression: Touchpad always stops working on precise iff syndaemon is run
> + Regression: Touchpad always stops working on precise if syndaemon is running

I'm sorry, but that changes the meaning of the phrase.

It's "iff" (i.e. "if and only if"; c.f. [1]) and it always happens
after "syndaemon is run" (as in "run, ran, run", i.e. not simple
present, but past participle; c.f. [2]), but not immediately after
syndaemon has been started from my perception.

And IIRC I haven't checked if it works again if I kill syndaemon
during a running session (which IMHO your wording using present
participle would imply), only if I comment it out in my .xsession and
don't start it at all. (I'll check that the next time I'll boot that
box.)

So I changed the "iff" back and replaced the maybe misleading "is run"
with "is started". Hope, that makes it more clear.

[1] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/iff
[2] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/run#Verb

  Regards, Axel
--
 ,''`. | Axel Beckert <email address hidden>, http://people.debian.org/~abe/
: :' : | Debian Developer, ftp.ch.debian.org Admin
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[Axel Beckert (xtaran)]

Hi,

Christopher M. Penalver wrote:
> Axel Beckert, 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/ .

Unfortunately there are neither armel nor armhf images available on
that page. But the device where this happened is an ARM-based netbook.

Upgrading is also no option since my Toshiba AC100 no more runs Ubuntu
but Debian nowadays…

  Regards, Axel