My touchpad is doing my head in. After removing a swollen battery placed under the touchpad in my laptop, the inaccurate touchpad persists.
Down buttons are back to use, but touchpad still works in a broken way. Pointer is not jumpy, but imprecise to reach a specific point in the screen, requiring to do several approaching movements. Also, I experience from random and annoying zoom-ins in active windows.
Also, the click by single tap is not so precise as it used to be.

It might be a permanent damage due to the battery, but I also suspect having two devices identified by "Touchpad" and working at the same time might not result in a flawless experience with the touchpad. I have to mention that the touchpad worked great from the beginning but its performance has been downgraded since the battery issue started.



My peripherals:

natalia@xiaomi:~$ xinput list
⎡ Virtual core pointer id=2 [master pointer (3)]
⎜ ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer id=4 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ ITE Tech. Inc. ITE Device(8910) id=12 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ CUST0001:00 04F3:3099 Touchpad id=14 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad id=16 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ PixArt USB Optical Mouse id=11 [slave pointer (2)]
⎣ Virtual core keyboard id=3 [master keyboard (2)]
↳ Virtual core XTEST keyboard id=5 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ Power Button id=6 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ Video Bus id=7 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ Video Bus id=8 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ Power Button id=9 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ Sleep Button id=10 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ XiaoMi USB 2.0 Webcam: XiaoMi U id=13 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ AT Translated Set 2 keyboard id=15 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ ITE Tech. Inc. ITE Device(8910) id=17 [slave keyboard (3)]


In accordance to the previous, there are two detected Touchpad devices.

natalia@xiaomi:~$ cat /proc/bus/input/devices |awk '/Touchpad/' RS="\n\n"
I: Bus=0011 Vendor=0002 Product=000e Version=0000
N: Name="ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad"
P: Phys=isa0060/serio1/input0
S: Sysfs=/devices/platform/i8042/serio1/input/input15
U: Uniq=
H: Handlers=mouse0 event7
B: PROP=5
B: EV=b
B: KEY=e420 10000 0 0 0 0
B: ABS=661800011000003
I: Bus=0018 Vendor=04f3 Product=3099 Version=0100
N: Name="CUST0001:00 04F3:3099 Touchpad"
P: Phys=i2c-CUST0001:00
S: Sysfs=/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:15.0/i2c_designware.0/i2c-6/i2c-CUST0001:00/0018:04F3:3099.0003/input/input30
U: Uniq=
H: Handlers=mouse2 event10
B: PROP=5
B: EV=1b
B: KEY=e520 10000 0 0 0 0
B: ABS=260800000000003
B: MSC=20


Libinput seems to control 'CUST0001:00 04F3:3099 Touchpad' and 'ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad', but after recklessly removing libinput (sudo apt purge --auto-remove xserver-xorg-input-libinput), I could still make use of the Touchpad (although no the keyborad nor mouse).

natalia@xiaomi:/etc/X11$ grep "Using input driver" /var/log/Xorg.0.log
[ 17.679] (II) Using input driver 'libinput' for 'Power Button'
[ 17.709] (II) Using input driver 'libinput' for 'Video Bus'
[ 17.733] (II) Using input driver 'libinput' for 'Video Bus'
[ 17.749] (II) Using input driver 'libinput' for 'Power Button'
[ 17.765] (II) Using input driver 'libinput' for 'Sleep Button'
[ 17.785] (II) Using input driver 'libinput' for 'PixArt USB Optical Mouse'
[ 17.825] (II) Using input driver 'libinput' for 'ITE Tech. Inc. ITE Device(8910)'
[ 17.845] (II) Using input driver 'libinput' for 'XiaoMi USB 2.0 Webcam: XiaoMi U'
[ 17.885] (II) Using input driver 'libinput' for 'CUST0001:00 04F3:3099 Touchpad'
[ 18.054] (II) Using input driver 'libinput' for 'AT Translated Set 2 keyboard'
[ 18.069] (II) Using input driver 'libinput' for 'ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad'
[ 18.104] (II) Using input driver 'libinput' for 'ITE Tech. Inc. ITE Device(8910)'
[ 3285.434] (II) Using input driver 'libinput' for 'PixArt USB Optical Mouse'


Also, doing the following unables the touchpad use (14: CUST0001:00 04F3:3099 Touchpad)

natalia@xiaomi:~$ xinput set-prop 14 "Device Enabled" 0

But doing this doesn't (16: ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad), and the touchpad works so badly as normal.

natalia@xiaomi:~$ xinput set-prop 16 "Device Enabled" 0


Any ideas? Should I permanently disable some driver?


Information about Kernel and Distribution:
natalia@xiaomi:~$ cat /proc/version
Linux version 4.15.0-135-generic (buildd@lgw01-amd64-005) (gcc version 7.5.0 (Ubuntu 7.5.0-3ubuntu1~18.04)) #139-Ubuntu SMP Mon Jan 18 17:38:24 UTC 2021
natalia@xiaomi:~$ lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: LinuxMint
Description: Linux Mint 19.1 Tessa
Release: 19.1
Codename: tessa

If you remove libinput your touchpad is taken over by a very generic "mouse" driver.

If you cannot configure your device as desired with libinput, you can try installing the old synaptics driver.

I didn't mention it, but sudo apt install xserver-xorg-input-synaptics (letting synaptics driver override libinput) resulted in the same imprecise cursor control.
Also, as far as I understand, synaptics driver would only take over synaptics touchpads, right?

You can check with And if it is recognized you can also configure it.If you like the result we will see how to make it permanent.

I have already installed synaptics with the same bad movements detection.
Which parameters do I have to configure in order to improve it? Thanks

natalia@xiaomi:~$ synclient
Parameter settings:
LeftEdge = 154
RightEdge = 3710
TopEdge = 134
BottomEdge = 2365
FingerLow = 1
FingerHigh = 1
MaxTapTime = 180
MaxTapMove = 202
MaxDoubleTapTime = 180
SingleTapTimeout = 180
ClickTime = 100
EmulateMidButtonTime = 0
EmulateTwoFingerMinZ = 282
EmulateTwoFingerMinW = 7
VertScrollDelta = 92
HorizScrollDelta = 92
VertEdgeScroll = 0
HorizEdgeScroll = 0
CornerCoasting = 0
VertTwoFingerScroll = 1
HorizTwoFingerScroll = 0
MinSpeed = 1
MaxSpeed = 1.75
AccelFactor = 0.0434688
TouchpadOff = 0
LockedDrags = 0
LockedDragTimeout = 5000
RTCornerButton = 2
RBCornerButton = 3
LTCornerButton = 0
LBCornerButton = 0
TapButton1 = 1
TapButton2 = 3
TapButton3 = 2
ClickFinger1 = 1
ClickFinger2 = 3
ClickFinger3 = 2
CircularScrolling = 0
CircScrollDelta = 0.1
CircScrollTrigger = 0
CircularPad = 0
PalmDetect = 0
PalmMinWidth = 10
PalmMinZ = 200
CoastingSpeed = 20
CoastingFriction = 50
PressureMotionMinZ = 30
PressureMotionMaxZ = 160
PressureMotionMinFactor = 1
PressureMotionMaxFactor = 1
ResolutionDetect = 1
GrabEventDevice = 0
TapAndDragGesture = 1
AreaLeftEdge = 0
AreaRightEdge = 0
AreaTopEdge = 0
AreaBottomEdge = 0
HorizHysteresis = 23
VertHysteresis = 23
ClickPad = 1
RightButtonAreaLeft = 1932
RightButtonAreaRight = 0
RightButtonAreaTop = 2049
RightButtonAreaBottom = 0
MiddleButtonAreaLeft = 0
MiddleButtonAreaRight = 0
MiddleButtonAreaTop = 0
MiddleButtonAreaBottom = 0

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Touchpad_Synaptics
Good luck, let's hope it's not purely physical damage.

Thanks. I will give it a try and I'll update

The outcome has been scaring - especially for a newbie haha.
After sudo mkdir /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d and sudo nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/70.synaptics.conf, pasting the settings described in the article and rebooting, all I had on the screen is the command line prompting to log in.
I have had to sudo rm -r xorg.conf.d and reboot, back to normal.
I am going to purge synaptics and buy a wireless touchpad xd.

I hope you just moved it to a different location, so now you can show us what that dir/file looks like, and we can figure out why Xorg rejected it so vehemently?
And the accompanying Xorg.log, resp. the journal from that timeframe.

BTW, I think the naming convention would ask for sth like 70-synpatics.conf (note the dash instead of a dot), but at worst a small mistake like that should make Xorg ignore that file, not collapse.

Sorry for a belated reply. No, I am sure I typed "70-synpatics.conf", but typed it wrong here.

Update: this is weird, but the problem cause hasn't have anything to do with drivers.
After putting a new battery and using the laptop on battery power, I noticed the pointer worked perfectly back again.
But it starts malfunctioning on A/C power.

Same issue is described here:
https://www.dell.com/community/Lapto...795644#M628846
"The issue is the grounding for the charger"

The A/C power I am using is not the original one as it had to be replaced because the plug was broken.

When the pointer started malfunctioning I initially assumed that it had to do with the battery swelling as it actually happened before replacing the A/C power.

Thread should be closed.