[SOLVED] Touchpad recognized as "PS/2 Elantech Touchpad", multitouch - not working on latest Linux distros (Mint,Ubuntu,Fedora,Manjaro)

Chripcikas · 06-24-2017, 08:10 PM

Hello,

My touchpad doesn't recognize any multitouch features. When I searched my touchpad through the terminal with "xinput", I found "PS/2 Elantech Touchpad". It seems to me that touchpad is recognized as a regular mouse (left click, right click and pointer). I tried to install and use different kernels with no luck. Distros that I tried (Fedora 25, Mint 18,18.1,18.2 BETA, Manjaro 17.0.1, Ubuntu 17.04) didn't solve anything.

I'm being advised to use windows, but my hope is to properly set up linux mint 18.1 KDE and use it as my main distro. I appreciate your time for reading this and I hope with your expertise, the issue is solvable.

Please answer in a simplified way, since I'm a novice with linux.

ferrari · 06-24-2017, 11:03 PM

Welcome to LinuxQuestions.org. The Linux learning curve can be a bit daunting, but we'll do our best to make things easy for you. It may well be that your touchpad hardware is too new to be fully supported. In any case multitouch features are work in progress for the lbinput Xorg input driver. The touchpad chipset details may be relevant here. Some terminal commands will help provide more information for those that may be able to advise further. Open a terminal window and do

Code:

cat /proc/bus/input/devices

or with additional filtering (for your touchpad device)

Code:

cat /proc/bus/input/devices |awk '/Elantech/' RS="\n\n"

Copy the output generated and post here, prefereably enclosing within code tags (refer to the forum editor '#' icon).

At an Xorg level, check which input driver is in use

Code:

grep "Using input driver" /var/log/Xorg.0.log

For recent distro versions, I would expect libinput to be in use, as opposed to the deprecated evdev and synaptics drivers. (However for some touchpad hardware, the legacy drivers still provide a better user experience.)

jefro · 06-26-2017, 02:28 PM

Hello and welcome to LQ.

Be sure to search for terms PS/2 Elantech linux

Tips maybe below.

https://superuser.com/questions/7214...e-ubuntu-13-10
"
Check out comment #137 on this thread - download the dkms package and follow the instructions to see if that helps.

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...x?comments=all

Note that this doesn't seem to work for some Gigabyte notebooks.

[Edit] As requested, the solution from the link above is:

Step 1: Download the following dkms package

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...h-x551c.tar.gz

Step 2: Run the following commands in the download directory (or adjust the paths accordingly):

sudo dkms ldtarball psmouse-elantech-x551c.tar.gz
sudo dkms install -m psmouse -v elantech-x551c
sudo rmmod psmouse
sudo modprobe psmouse

"

This should still work but you have to id your device correctly.

Chripcikas · 07-10-2017, 07:54 PM

I have come this far:

Code:

cat /proc/bus/input/devices


I: Bus=0011 Vendor=0002 Product=0001 Version=0000
N: Name="PS/2 Elantech Touchpad"
P: Phys=isa0060/serio2/input0
S: Sysfs=/devices/platform/i8042/serio2/input/input11
U: Uniq=
H: Handlers=mouse0 event6 
B: PROP=1
B: EV=7
B: KEY=70000 0 0 0 0
B: REL=3

Code:

grep "Using input driver" /var/log/Xorg.0.log

Code:

[  1169.844] (II) Using input driver 'evdev' for 'PS/2 Elantech Touchpad'

Code:

~/Downloads $ sudo dkms ldtarball psmouse-elantech-x551c.tar.gz
[sudo] password for burundukas: 

Loading tarball for psmouse-elantech-x551c

DKMS: ldtarball completed.

Creating symlink /var/lib/dkms/psmouse/elantech-x551c/source ->
                 /usr/src/psmouse-elantech-x551c

DKMS: add completed.
~/Downloads $ sudo dkms install -m psmouse -v elantech-x551c

Kernel preparation unnecessary for this kernel.  Skipping...

Building module:
cleaning build area....
make KERNELRELEASE=4.8.0-58-generic -C /lib/modules/4.8.0-58-generic/build M=/var/lib/dkms/psmouse/elantech-x551c/build/src psmouse.ko.....(bad exit status: 2)
Error! Bad return status for module build on kernel: 4.8.0-58-generic (x86_64)
Consult /var/lib/dkms/psmouse/elantech-x551c/build/make.log for more information.

I've got the dkms package (step 1), but I do not understand the error (step 2). Any thoughts?

ferrari · 07-11-2017, 02:43 AM

The posted output shows that your device is supported and working, with the Xorg evdev input driver being in use. You might get better results using the libinput driver. Any gesture/multi-touch support will depend on Xorg input driver support for the particular touchpad, (and not the underlying low-level kernel support).

References:
https://community.linuxmint.com/soft...input-libinput
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Libinput
https://wayland.freedesktop.org/libi...touchpads.html

Chripcikas · 07-12-2017, 07:54 PM

I installed xserver-xorg-input-libinput without uninstalling evdev. When i run

Code:

grep "Using input driver" /var/log/Xorg.0.log

now, I get

Code:

[    14.457] (II) Using input driver 'libinput' for 'PS/2 Elantech Touchpad'

. Checked "touchpad settings" and it still says "no touchpad found". Anything else I can try? Or maybe you know what is the cause of the error in previous post (psmouse-elantech-x551c.tar.gz) that didn't let me use the package?

ferrari · 07-12-2017, 08:18 PM

Ok, so your device appears not to be fully supported. I'm not sure why KDE doesn't recognise the device now that it is handled by libinput. A bug report may be necessary to help progress this.

Quote:

Or maybe you know what is the cause of the error in previous post (psmouse-elantech-x551c.tar.gz) that didn't let me use the package?

Well, a bit ore investigation is needed. Note the message it provided...

Quote:

Consult /var/lib/dkms/psmouse/elantech-x551c/build/make.log for more information.

Did you check the log yet?

Chripcikas · 07-13-2017, 07:18 AM

Code:

$ /var/lib/dkms/psmouse/elantech-x551c/build/make.log 
bash: /var/lib/dkms/psmouse/elantech-x551c/build/make.log: Permission denied

Any way to bypass "permission denied" bit? I entered it in terminal, am I checking the log the right way, or is there another way?

If this doesn't help, i'll go for bug report.

ferrari · 07-13-2017, 02:55 PM

It looks like you're trying to execute it. You need to view it. Try

Code:

cat /var/lib/dkms/psmouse/elantech-x551c/build/make.log

Chripcikas · 07-13-2017, 07:03 PM

Code:

$ cat /var/lib/dkms/psmouse/elantech-x551c/build/make.log
DKMS make.log for psmouse-elantech-x551c for kernel 4.8.0-58-generic (x86_64)
ma. 10. juli 15:24:00 +0200 2017
make: Entering directory '/usr/src/linux-headers-4.8.0-58-generic'
  CC [M]  /var/lib/dkms/psmouse/elantech-x551c/build/src/psmouse-base.o
  CC [M]  /var/lib/dkms/psmouse/elantech-x551c/build/src/synaptics.o
  CC [M]  /var/lib/dkms/psmouse/elantech-x551c/build/src/alps.o
  CC [M]  /var/lib/dkms/psmouse/elantech-x551c/build/src/elantech.o
  CC [M]  /var/lib/dkms/psmouse/elantech-x551c/build/src/logips2pp.o
  CC [M]  /var/lib/dkms/psmouse/elantech-x551c/build/src/lifebook.o
  CC [M]  /var/lib/dkms/psmouse/elantech-x551c/build/src/sentelic.o
  CC [M]  /var/lib/dkms/psmouse/elantech-x551c/build/src/trackpoint.o
  CC [M]  /var/lib/dkms/psmouse/elantech-x551c/build/src/touchkit_ps2.o
  CC [M]  /var/lib/dkms/psmouse/elantech-x551c/build/src/cypress_ps2.o
/var/lib/dkms/psmouse/elantech-x551c/build/src/cypress_ps2.c: In function ‘cypress_process_packet’:
/var/lib/dkms/psmouse/elantech-x551c/build/src/cypress_ps2.c:543:2: error: too few arguments to function ‘input_mt_assign_slots’
  input_mt_assign_slots(input, slots, pos, n);
  ^
In file included from /var/lib/dkms/psmouse/elantech-x551c/build/src/cypress_ps2.c:25:0:
./include/linux/input/mt.h:121:5: note: declared here
 int input_mt_assign_slots(struct input_dev *dev, int *slots,
     ^
scripts/Makefile.build:289: recipe for target '/var/lib/dkms/psmouse/elantech-x551c/build/src/cypress_ps2.o' failed
make[1]: *** [/var/lib/dkms/psmouse/elantech-x551c/build/src/cypress_ps2.o] Error 1
Makefile:1663: recipe for target 'psmouse.ko' failed
make: *** [psmouse.ko] Error 2
make: Leaving directory '/usr/src/linux-headers-4.8.0-58-generic'

Did you spot anything that can be fixed?

Rickkkk · 07-24-2017, 09:47 AM

Hi Chripcikas,

Assuming your touchpad is fully supported by the kernel version you are running, you may need to adjust your xorg configuration to provide the appropriate libinput parameters to enable multitouch support. Please look up xinput and libinput documentation for the proper discovery commands to run (these will identify the different configurable options for your device) and then create the appropriate configuration entries for xorg.

I had to dig around a bit to get multitouch working on the system I'm currently writing this on, but once I was able to determine that the current kernel supported multitouch for my peripheral, I was able to identify the configuration entries required in xorg.

Cheers.

Chripcikas · 09-27-2017, 03:14 PM

Finally with the help of this reddit post i managed to solve the issue, hopefully permanently:

https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxquesti...usb_mouse_and/

My touchpad is now recognized as ETPS/2 Elantech touchpad, not PS/2 Elantech Touchpad as it was before, and touchpad settings are somewhat working. Further configurations are yet to be explored.

This code was the solution:

Code:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="i8042.nomux=1 i8042.reset"

and the kernel I use currently: 4.10.0-35-generic

jefro · 09-27-2017, 07:08 PM

Dang, thanks for the update and solution.

More info on that now. https://unix.stackexchange.com/quest...ting-of-ubuntu

ferrari · 09-28-2017, 03:04 AM

Edit: Oops, posted to wrong thread :/