Hi,

I just recently updated my Mandrake/Mandriva installation from 10.1 (using kernel 2.6.8) to 10.2 (Mandriva 2005 LE, 2.6.11 kernel). I've got everything working just fine with the exception of my ALPS touchpad. Using the touchpad, I can't use quick tapping to open anything like I used to. If I slowly and rythmically time the tapping, then I can get it to work, but no quick double tapping like I'm used to. I've tried using the synaptics touchpad driver and generic PS/2 drivers, and neither work. I've tried tweaking the maxtaptime values in my xorg.conf file, and no joy there either. When I do a dmesg, I get:

ALPS Touchpad (Glidepoint) detected
Disabling hardware tapping
input: AlpsPS/2 ALPS TouchPad on isa0060/serio1

I think it's just a matter of needing to enable hardware tapping, but I don't know how. I was reading, and it seem this is a problem that cropped up in the 2.6.11 kernel. Apparently there is some sort of kernel patch that is supposed to fix it, but I am a newb on my third installation, and I do not know how to apply kernel patches or recompile and update my kernel. So if anybody has some easy solution that would be great, or if there is no easy solution, it somebody could walk me through a tough solution, that would be great also.

Thanks.

post xorg.conf file and also the section of your .config file which shows the device drivers as moouse

I had some related problems with that ALPS driver - in my case, the HW tapping was enabled to begin with, but it produced erratic taps. You move the pointer and random clicks sneak in, you inadvertently focus windows, click on icons, etc, makes the touchpad almost unusable. I guess that's what you will see once you find a way to enable the hw tapping. In order to disable mine, I had to actually change the code alps.c kernel module, but I'm sure there's a better way. I want taps, though, so this didn't work for me.

I also tried the Synaptics driver, but unless I'm missing something, it works on top the alps hardware driver, just interprets what that driver delivers in a more sophisticated way, and so inherits the same random-tap problems as before.

Here's the solution I found. I made it so that psmouse loads as a module, and I specified proto=exps as the module parameter (added

options psmouse proto=exps

in my /etc/modprobe.conf). Do an lsmod and see if psmouse is a module on your system and it's easy. If psmouse is compiled in, you can still add the parameter to your grub or lilo config (I don't have the syntax in front of me right now, goggle it).

That restored the touchpad to its pre-2.6.11 behavior.

Hope it helps,
mlp

mlp68,

Hahaha. I just got it worked out last night the same way, except I used psmouse.proto=imps (I was able just to add the parameter to my grub config). Clicking and everything works perfectly now. Your problem with erratic tapping must be the reason why it's disabled at bootup. So pretty much the problem is with the synaptics driver and ALPS touchpads I take it? Because in 2.6.8, I don't think I had synaptics, and my mouse was just emulating a ps mouse to begin with. In any case, I'm glad it's all working now, and thank you very much for the replies.