Touchpad stopped allowing taps.

Hello. I am using a Dell Inspiron 4150 with a synaptics touchpad. I installed Slackware 10 and everything ran fine. I recently changed the kernel to 2.6.7 and the tap feature of the touchpad stopped working. Everywhere I have been searching online seems to point to some extra software I need to add. I don't understand why I need to add anything else when the tap feature was working before under 2.4.26.

Is there a benefit to using the extra synaptics touchpad software?

How can I get the synaptics drivers that are in the kernel to accept the touchpad tap feature again? Is this a kernel configuration error on my part?

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

The extra synaptics software lets you configure the touchpad to scroll when you run your finger along the right side or the bottom and it lests you do more adjusting of motion and speed, etc.

The reason you lost tapping, I think, is bacause they changed the default place the mouse (touchpad) sends it's position etc info to between the 2.4.x and the 2.6.x kernels. Look in your XF86config or your xorg.conf file and see if there is a line under the input device section that says

Option "Device" "/dev/psaux"

and change it to

Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"

or the other way around (sorry not at my Linux box right this second and I'm going from memory).

Also, they may have changed the default protocol, so it will be the same idea with

Option "Protocol" "auto-dev"

and change it to

Option "Protocol" "IPMS/2"

or the other way around again.

Hopefully my memory is good.

I made the changes to xorg.conf and rebooted. It didn't change anything. It was like nothing changed.

hi, take a loock under
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...hreadid=190706

this worked for me, using ibm thinkpad r40 + FC 2 + kernel 2.6.6 and 2.6.7 as well.


have a nice weekend!


leg

if you don't want to install the synaptics drivers (they didn't compile right for me) you can just pass this option to the kernel on bootup:

psmouse.proto=imps

that should get the tapping and the scrolling working again

kevin

Originally posted by Kman12 if you don't want to install the synaptics drivers (they didn't compile right for me) you can just pass this option to the kernel on bootup: psmouse.proto=imps that should get the tapping and the scrolling working again kevin

Whoa. This is a nice and elegant solution.
The problem with my Inspiron 4100 with FC2 was a little bit tricky : tapping on the touchpad worked only when an external PS2 mouse was plugged in at boot time. Although there is always the possibility to install another driver, the reason for which I decided to switch from Slackware to FC was to stop playing with configuration files and source code whenever there was a problem or a new function to add.

Thanks Kman12.

Does the method of passing "psmouse.proto=imps" to the kernel disable the acceleration functionality on the touchpad?