I recently installed Debian Jessie on my Chromebook, and everything seems to be in order but the touchpad is not working.

I tried following the instructions in https://wiki.debian.org/SynapticsTouchpad. However the following command does not yield output:

So the problem seems to be that the kernel is not detecting the presence of the touchpad. Is there anything I can do to resolve? My kernel version is 4.2.0-0.bpo.1-amd64

Without any indication on what laptop model nor touchpad model you have, it will be difficult to help you...

The only thing I could suggest would be to compile newer kernel...

Thanks for your reply. It is a Toshiba Chromebook CB35-B3340 (Item Model #: PLM02U-009008). I'm not sure how to find the touchpad model.

This is my first experience with a Linux OS, so apologies if I am a little slower keeping up. What do you mean by compiling newer kernel? Isn't 4.2 the latest stable kernel for Jessie?

Could have a look there for few commands that could help identify your touchpad :
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/determine-touchpad-type-920477/

Drivers are shipped with the kernel : sometimes compiling by your own the last source from kernel.org gives you a kernel with latest and appropriate drivers for your hardware...

Interesting problem with this chromebook. In order for the kernel to see the touchpad, you need to keep ps2 from deactivating the aux port (i8042.nopnp=1 on the kernel line of grub), BUT, if you do that, then the keyboard isn't recognized. Kernel versions doesn't matter, I've tried with the default Jessie 3.16.x, 4.0.x from backports, 4.1.x from backports, and 4.2.x from backports. It does the same thing in every version. I believe if you recompiled the kernel using the Fedora configuration it might work (Fedora works out of the box), but that's not exactly something that I'd suggest someone brand new try.

Another issue you're going to run into is getting the audio working, as it doesn't work out of the box in Debian either.

While it might be possible to get everything working in Debian, unless you're absolutely DEAD SET on using Debian, just install Fedora instead, and everything except the audio will work out of the box, and the audio is easy enough to get working. I have the cb35-b3330 and cb35-b3340 and have been testing them with various distro's, so far Fedora is the ONLY one that I've managed to get everything working without issue, which is sad to say given how much I love Debian.

BTW, once you get it working, the 3340 is a FANTASTIC linux laptop. I'm actually on that right now, runs magnificently, and such a gorgeous LCD.

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Thank you. I am going to try to install Fedora as TM suggests and will post my results

So I booted Fedora on my Chromebook and, as predicted, it works great! The only things are that the audio does not work (not a huge deal and I'm okay with figuring that out later) and I don't know how to configure the Trackpad to my personal preferences. Right now the trackpad has two-finger scroll, right-click and left-click, but is there a config file located somewhere that I can play around with in the future? My device is apparently an Elan touchpad according to the /proc/bus/input/devices file

For sound.

The second command should return that the only thing running with alsa in the name is that grep command. If so, then navigate to /var/lib/alsa/ and delete asound.state, replace it with one that can be found here.

Then edit the /usr/share/pulseaudio/alsa-mixer/paths/analog-output-headphones.conf file, find the [ELEMENT SPEAKER] and change

to
Reboot and you should have sound, AND when you plug in headphones, it will properly mute said sound.

For the touchpad, there are several options, but I'd need to be on Fedora to know properly what they are (currently on Debian). Essentially, you need to make sure synaptics is installed (I'm pretty sure it is), then create the 50synaptics.conf file to modify the synaptics driver properties. You can use synclient to test settings before putting them into the conf file. This, IMO, is the easiest method UNLESS you are running the KDE respin of Fedora.

So, just in case anyone decides they want to run Debian on baytrail chromebooks, I've gotten my CB35-B3330 working, and here's a quick howto:

Requirements:
1. You'll need to run Stretch or SID, or manually copy the firmware from somewhere, the firmware package for the sound card doesn't exist in Jessie.
2. You'll need a 4.3+ kernel for the touchpad to work without having to pass kernel options from grub (which IS available in Jessie-backports).
3. Not a requirement, but the 4.4 kernel has MASSIVE improvements for the video card from <=4.3
4. You'll need to have the chromeos version of the asound.state file handy

To get it working:
1. install alsa-utils and firmware-intel-sound
2. copy the asound.state to /var/lib/alsa/ overwriting the existing one (should be created upon installing alsa-utils) and to /etc/asound.state
3. alsactl restore -f /etc/asound.state
4. That's it!! You should now have 100% working baytrail-based chromebook with Debian!!

BTW - thanks go out to the guys as the phoenix linux users group for working with me today in figuring this out.

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