I'm not certain whether this is a hardware question, a laptop question, or a Suse question. We'll start here.

I've just installed 64-bit Suse Linux 10 on a HP Pavillion zv5260. With help from various online resources, I've got dvd video, a wireless connection, etc.

The problem? While typing anything in any application, the keyboard cursor will periodically and mysteriously jump to some other arbitrary place in the document. Even the most basic wordprocessing, document editing, or even typing in urls in a browser is a complicated mess. Just typing this post, I've had to retype and correct several times.

The behavior does not seem to be connected with any particular keystroke. I don't think it's a physical problem, e.g., brushing against the touchpad or bumping another key, since the problem only happens in Linux.

I've changed the default keyboard from generic to HP Pavilion, but this made no difference. Any clues?

Take a look at:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=26711
where the poster says that disabling the touchpad solves the problem. (Then, of course, you'd probably want to use a mouse. You didn't state if you were using a mouse in addition to the touchpad, or just the touchpad.)

Anyway, that page, and a search on Google for "cursor jumps," has quite a few potentially useful hints.

Thanks, that seems to have been the problem. I was even using a Logitech optical mouse, like the poster in the link. I've disabled the touchpad in Yast, and things seem to be better. Oddly, the touchpad still works.

Maybe you need to disable it in the BIOS rather than in YaST?

i cant remember the exact function that is used by touchpads but i think it uses a basic mouse function, if you have something like gdm, (forgive me if the name is wrong but it is a driver for using a mouse with no gui), that can also cause a lot of conflict with x running as well...
can't say if suse still have that but i did come across it recently with mandriva and its still available with that distro....

I was diagnosing problems on a Compaq Evo N600c all last week.

I installed a range of distros on a new second partition out of interest, finally ending up with Sun Java Desktop v2 - I use this a fair bit because it is so lightly loaded up, doesn't have 25 different applications to do the same job lol. You download other apps and install them if you wish... I like that method

It also runs Gnome which in that vintage was much faster imho.

Anyway JDS exhibited some odd things. Once it recognised the USB mouse, both that and the touchpad worked.

Next reboot, and I could never get the touchpad back. Strange. Anyway I'll have to remove the extra partition so it's all a bit academic.

The touchpad appears to be recognised as a PS/2 device - or maybe a com port device.

Anyway laptops can be touchy. There is a website that has information about Linux on laptops, I found it in a google search... can't remember the url. Might be worth paying it a visit if your problem persists.

Richard in Australia

Do you have an ALPS touchpad or a Synaptics touchpad in that laptop? I have two laptops, one with ALPS, one with Synaptics. The Synaptics one works perfectly. The ALPS one has caused me to curse on many occasions.

Turning off the "touch to click" feature is really all you likely need to do (and maybe exactly what you did).
I've been much happier since I did that.

The touchpad driver is actually quite nice once you do that, the circular scrolling feature is quite nice, once you get used to using it.

Cheers.

The touchpad is an ALPS, and, at least in YAST, there is no option for "touch to click." I unclicked "Activate this pointer," which seems to have helped a lot, but the problem is still intermittent. I booted into BIOS and found no touchpad settings. Is there a Linux configuration file for the touchpad I could edit? Any reason to think that switching to a wheel mouse would make a difference?

I don't know laptops, but any chance you might have mouse navigation turned on ?

Sorry, by mouse navigation I meant 'move pointer with keyboard (using the num pad)' in the mouse settings.

**sigh**

Things like this are why GUI admin tools are such an ultimate dentriment to understanding how things work.

The configation for input devices (and other things) for X windows is the file /etc/X11/xorg.conf (or /etc/X11/XF86Config or /etc/XF86Config or ... depending on your version of X and your distro.)

In any case, here are the relevant portions of what I use that work. You may actually have to edit your xorg.conf file by hand. Think of it as a broadening experience that's good for you.



Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "PS2 mouse"
Driver "mouse"
Option "Buttons" "12"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
#zsd Option "Emulate3Buttons" "on"
Option "InputFashion" "Mouse"
Option "Name" "PS/2-Mouse;ExplorerPS/2"
Option "Protocol" "Auto"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Synaptics Mouse" # Really ALPS
Driver "synaptics"
Option "AccelFactor" "0.01"
Option "BottomEdge" "600"
Option "CircScrollDelta" "0.1"
Option "CircScrollTrigger" "6"
Option "CircularScrolling" "1"
Option "Device" "/dev/psaux"
Option "EdgeMotionMaxSpeed" "15"
Option "EdgeMotionMinSpeed" "15"
Option "EmulateMidButtonTime" "75"
Option "FingerHigh" "15"
Option "FingerLow" "14"
Option "HorizScrollDelta" "0"
Option "InputFashion" "Mouse"
Option "LeftEdge" "140"
Option "MaxSpeed" "1"
Option "MaxTapMove" "0"
Option "MaxTapTime" "0"
Option "MinSpeed" "0.3"
Option "Name" "ALPS;Touchpad"
Option "Protocol" "auto-dev"
Option "RightEdge" "830"
Option "SHMConfig" "on"
Option "TopEdge" "120"
Option "UpDownScrolling" "1"
Option "VertScrollDelta" "0"
EndSection


Section "ServerLayout"
...
InputDevice "Synaptics Mouse" "CorePointer"
InputDevice "PS2 mouse" "SendCoreEvents"
...
EndSection




To get the evil touch-to-click turned off, I also had to patch the X11 synaptics driver. Download 0.4.14 and make the following change:

diff /local/src/sys/synaptics-0.14.4/alpscomm.c /local/src/sys/synaptics-0.14.4/alpscomm.c.orig
173,176d172
< /* zsd: Turn off those damn touchpad clicks? */
< if (packet[2] & 1)
< z = 35;
<
203c199
< /* zsd: remove taps? left |= (packet[2] ) & 1; */
---
> left |= (packet[2] ) & 1;


Compile that and then replace the orignal one (found in /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/input/synaptics_drv.o in Slackware 10.2, maybe your distro has it somewhere else) and then restart X.


Note that you should back up your original xorg.conf and synaptics_drv.o file in case Something Bad happens.

Cheers.
Jim

Jim, The thing here is that a computer isn't just for people who want to, or need to, know about all that goes on under the hood.

The vast majority of computer owners are just simple old "users" like me. Hence the type of login and the permissives settings "user" and "users".

Yes I do know a little about them. I have used them since about 1988, and although technically minded I knew nothing - echoing the words of Sgt. Schultz of "Hogans' Heroes" fame. Yes, I designed relay logic process control systems and trouble-shooted them back in those days.

But why should I need to know what went on inside a tool I was using? That is all a computer is, to the majority of people. And to many technical as well as non-technical people, too.

A Graphical User Interface is a way to get around this, so that a computer can be reconfigured without needing the geek info.

I'm not denigrating your knowledge and your background. I actually do understand from where you are coming, but maybe you didn't see that it sounded elitist. Not intentionally so, may I add.

The points you raised in your post are excellent. Indeed several months ago I had to disect my Xorg config file in PC-BSD - yes another GUI based OS, Unix what's more, always traditionally the premise of geeks!! But this one is for users like me. And maybe the guy you answered.

Thank-you for the useful input, my friend, those of us who can't automatically recall these things usually have a directory somewhere for useful hints and tips. And no, I refuse to call it a folder because that is what is in Macs, and Microsoft stole the name (amongst other things) back in the days of Windows95. Sadly the name is being used by Linux a lot nowadays. Oh dear, I'm starting to sound geekish and elitist now lolol!!!

eagles_lair...
absolutely well said..
my appologies to anyone that this offends but a lot of questions are ask by people with no linux knowledge but lots of windows knowledge...
to get them to stay with linux and leave windows, they need to see the easy way...linux can be easy or as hard and complicated as we want...
i can still do a manuel install of everything on my linux box but why...if i have to yes but otherwise i take the easy road, too old and too stuffin annoying to be silly and do things the hard way...
we invented the wheel to carry heavy loads, why not use it...
KISS = Keep It Simple Stupid.. needs to be applied when show someone new how to get linux working...

I don't at all mind a "sigh." And I don't mind working under the hood. I program in my regular life. And, yes, I am new to Linux, but I've been able to get multiple sound cards working, wireless--all without asking for help. I've had to learn about tarballs, CUPS, editing config files--all just to get a basic system working. I asked for the configuration file because I knew there had to be one. Still, this synaptic driver problem is a bear. Changing the settings in xorg.conf didn't do it. I even tried to kill the touchpad by #-ing out the offending description. The instructions for installing the latest driver indicate I've got to "configure the kernel" and "compile evdev as a module." More googling.

I'm sorry if you think I was putting you (or anyone who doesn't want to be a computer wizard) down... I really was commenting on the fact that I think that having GUIs to do system admin actually keeps people from being able to learn about their computer.

I agree that the averge person on the street doesn't want to know everything about everything about his or her computer. However, the fact is that computers are extremely complex and flexible tools, and thus anyone who wants to get the most out of them will end up learning a lot about them sooner or later... and I think that GUI admin tools get in the way of this understanding.

Part of the reason the GUI tools get in the way is because (in general) they don't have every possible function built in... for example, in this case you would like the GUI to have some option to turn off the touch-to-click feature of the touchpad. And when no such feature is found, the poor user is left with no knowledge about where to turn.

An admin tool that told you what system files it was modifying would be a bit more helpful, because then you might be pointed in the right direction when you found the GUI couldn't do what you want to do. But it seems that the idea of letting neophyte users get at more than the absolute minimum about of information is evil or something, and so users are left to hunt through GUI tool options, hoping that they will find a button or checkbox to do what they want. In certain cases this might be the right thing to do, but I think in many cases this approach is more time consuming in the long run.

Cheers
Jim