touchpad mouse not working properly

I have installed fedora core 1, and my touchpad mouse isnt going where it should be, really hard to control. During setup, I had chosen the three buttons mouse(ps2), since i dont know which one should I choose.

also whenever i boot fedora for the first time, the gui login screen wont show up, i then reboot, and it works. Anyone knows how to solve this?

I can't offer any help. but i have the same problem with my touchpad. im using Mandrake 9.1. it must be a linux thing.

What make laptop?

Hi !

I got the same problem.

I'm using kernel 2.6-4 on a aspire 1705 SCi.
I used to work on kernel 2.6 -test and everything went fine. I could use the touchpad as i wish even if the central button did not work, but i didn't lmind at all.
Since i've changed to 2.6-4 this button is working, but not the tapping on the touchpad. I can still move the mouse but no longer open or select anything with it and it drives me crazy !! i don't want to install a mouse !!

Thank you for your attention

Olivier

I forgot to say that it doesn't work any longer on the previous versions of my kernel !!!
(and since i'm a linux newbie it's a bit difficlt to find where to search)

my laptop is a dell inspiron 2100

I have FC1 running on my Compaq Presario 2585 and had no problems with the touch pad whatsoever. I went with whatever Linux chose during setup, which I think was the PS/2 generic. The little scroll dealie to the right of the pad works, as well as tapping. I am using the 2.4.22 kernel and questioning whether or not to go to the 2.6.4 kernel. Some people using 2.6.4 w/FC1 have had problems with sound and, as we have seen here, the touch-pad. 2.4.22 supports USB2 and I have acpi enabled, so I'm happy. There are synaptic touch pad drivers available (http://compass.com/synaptics/). Good luck!

I confess that I'm totally lost in linux. could someone tell me where i can look at my mouse settings ?? Maybe i'll find the answer by myself.

thx for your attention

olivier

Originally posted by Ezeeckiel I confess that I'm totally lost in linux. could someone tell me where i can look at my mouse settings ?? Maybe i'll find the answer by myself. thx for your attention olivier

I am using Fedora Core 1, so ,without any other mouse plugged in (i.e. USB or PS/2 mouse), and the touchpad enabled (I have a little rectangular button on my Compaq 2585 which enables the touchpad), I go to the Gnome main menu icon, select "System Settings/Mouse", enter my root password, and see that the touchpad is set up as "Generic/Wheel Mouse (PS/2)". I think it detected it as a wheel mouse because of the scroll pad to the right of the actual touchpad. Try choosing a few of the "Generic (PS/2)" options and see if it works.

Ok,

I've looked into the mouse settings and everything seems to work fine. My touchpad is detected as a generic PS2 mouse. But still i cannot find the touchpad settings !! Where would it be, if it ever exists ??
An other solution would be to find other drivers, and toinstall them ? but i don't know the brand of the touchpad ... help. Am i wrong about the driver ?

Olivier

Originally posted by Ezeeckiel i cannot find the touch-pad settings

As far as I know, there are none.

but i don't know the brand of the touch-pad ... help. Am i wrong about the driver?

OK, the Synaptics Driver for Linux (http://compass.com/synaptics/) does support your Acer Aspire, according to the website. In the page, there is useful information about how to set up tpconfig. It is a command line configuation tool, so I believe there is no graphical user interface (GUI) that you can open up and play with the settings. In addition to downloading the script provided at the site, you will need to install the tpconfig tarball (*.tar.gz) or rpm (*.rpm) if you are running some form of Red Hat, Fedora Core, etc. The latest version is found towards the bottom of the page. Note that a line in the script provided at the site has tapping disabled by default:

/usr/bin/tpconfig --tapmode=0

I personally like tapping (I'm a drummer) , so change it to:

/usr/bin/tpconfig --tapmode=1

I hope this helps.

The new 2.6 kernels implement synaptics firmware on bootup which totally hose a synaptics touchpad mouse.... Thats the only reason why I stay with 2.4.... They also did away with the tapping.... I tried installing the synaptics driver on 2.6 and it was a little better but not much..... It's way too touchy.. Spending hours with configuring the synaptics driver options along with Gnome's mouse settings made it a little better like I said, not much tho.... There is also an option you can pass to the kernel at boot time to re-enable the tapping and to also supposedly disable the new firmware. I never figured it out. I think it's in the menuconfig of the 2.6 kernels; how to do it and what options to pass.... I'm very displeased with the new kernels and won't touch em' with a laptop..... They are still cranking out the 2.4 series.....

I'm still trying to understand why they didn't just leave it alone. It works awsome in the 2.4's.... If you want to implement new features, don't shove it down someones throat. Just add it as a sub-option under the synaptics touchpad in menuconfig...... Makes no sense...

And you might have to download and compile alsa-driver with a specific ./configure switch that specifies your sound card.... The generic packages for alsa seem to break when you start upgrading kernels. Due to a complication and lack of clartity in the sound section of the kernel.... Not sure. I just enable the sound server top level option and then let the compilation of alsa-driver make my specific modules. Everything works flawlessly then.....

Originally posted by jong357 The new 2.6 kernels implement synaptics firmware on bootup which totally hose a synaptics touchpad mouse.... Thats the only reason why I stay with 2.4.... They also did away with the tapping.... I tried installing the synaptics driver on 2.6 and it was a little better but not much..... It's way too touchy.. Spending hours with configuring the synaptics driver options along with Gnome's mouse settings made it a little better like I said, not much tho.... There is also an option you can pass to the kernel at boot time to re-enable the tapping and to also supposedly disable the new firmware. I never figured it out. I think it's in the menuconfig of the 2.6 kernels; how to do it and what options to pass.... I'm very displeased with the new kernels and won't touch em' with a laptop..... They are still cranking out the 2.4 series..... I'm still trying to understand why they didn't just leave it alone. It works awsome in the 2.4's.... If you want to implement new features, don't shove it down someones throat. Just add it as a sub-option under the synaptics touchpad in menuconfig...... Makes no sense... And you might have to download and compile alsa-driver with a specific ./configure switch that specifies your sound card.... The generic packages for alsa seem to break when you start upgrading kernels. Due to a complication and lack of clartity in the sound section of the kernel.... Not sure. I just enable the sound server top level option and then let the compilation of alsa-driver make my specific modules. Everything works flawlessly then.....

::agrees::

The only problem i have with my synaptics touchpad is that the only way i can click on the screen is by pressing the real button and not by pressing the touchpad.I have 2.6.4+XFree4.4.0 and i remember that with 2.4.x i did not have that problem.

ya

you'll notice in your /etc/X11/XF86config that under your mouse section,

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Mouse0"
Driver "mouse"
Option "Protocol" "IMPS/2"
Option "Device" "/dev/psaux" # this line enables tapping
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
Option "Emulate3Buttons" "no"
EndSection

that was under 2.4 and under 2.6 its different. Heck when I tried changing it to reflect these working settings, I could not find the driver; no X


I really don't know whats wrong with people; when it working LEAVE-TO-F*-ALONE!
<happens all the time at work>

The kernel doesn't "hose" the synaptics touchpad... mine works just fine after a little tuning.
The reason why it doesn't work for most of you is because the "MaxTapTime" is set to 0.
Therefore the driver is not enabling you to tap because it's searching for a tap in 0 milliseconds.

set the option in your xorg.conf file to this

Option "MaxTapTime" "180"

This will acutally enable you use the pad as a primary click

I found the explanation in the README.gz that is installed with the driver.... it is as follows


* How can I configure tap-to-click behavior?

If you set MaxTapTime=0 in the X config file then the touchpad
will not use tapping at all, i.e. touching/tapping will not be
taken as a mouse click.

If, instead, you set MaxTapMove=0 in the X config file, then the
touchpad will not use tapping for a single finger tap (left mouse
button click) but will for the two and three finger tap (middle
and right button click).

* Why did tap-to-click stop working after I upgraded from an old version?

Time is now measured in milliseconds instead of "number of
packets". In practice, this means that if you are upgrading from
an old version, you need to change MaxTapTime and
EmulateMidButtonTime to make "tap to click" work. Good values are
180 and 75 respectively.




For those of you who don't know where the driver is... I found the source here

http://freshmeat.net/redir/synaptics...0.14.3.tar.bz2


Also here is my Input Device Section for my xorg.conf

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Synaptics Touchpad"
Driver "synaptics"
Option "MaxTapTime" "180"
Option "SHMConfig" "on"
Option "SendCoreEvents" "true"
Option "Protocol" "auto-dev"
Option "Device" "/dev/psaux"
Option "HorizScrollDelta" "0"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "Y"
EndSection