Touchpad not working in Ubuntu

kenneho · 10-08-2008, 11:47 AM

Hi.

I've just installed Ubuntu 8.04, and found that my touchpad doesn't work. As far as I know this is related to some xorg.conf incompatibility issue, but can't seem to find the necessary information on how to solve it. Does anyone have link to somewhere describing what to do?

Regards,
kenneho

indienick · 10-08-2008, 12:16 PM

You may have to install the "synaptics" modules.

Code:

# apt-get install synaptics

kenneho · 10-11-2008, 01:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by indienick

You may have to install the "synaptics" modules.

Code:

# apt-get install synaptics

Thanks for the tips. Doesn't seem to be installed:

Code:

kenneho@server:~$ sudo apt-get install synaptics
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Package synaptics is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source
However the following packages replace it:
  tpconfig
E: Package synaptics has no installation candidate

Do you know which repo that provides this package?

kenneho · 10-27-2008, 02:51 PM

I'm still struggling with getting my touchpad to work, and I could really need some input.

I've tried issuing "sudo cat /dev/input/mouse0" (and similar for the other device files under the /dev/input folder) hoping to see some response when using my touchpad, but without success. The way I interpret this is that none of these device files are related to my touchpad.

How do I go about finding the correct device file (or creating a new one) for my touchpad?

I found this piece of info in /proc/bus/input/devices:

Code:

I: Bus=0017 Vendor=0001 Product=0001 Version=0100
N: Name="Macintosh mouse button emulation"
P: Phys=
S: Sysfs=/devices/virtual/input/input0
U: Uniq=
H: Handlers=mouse0 event0 
B: EV=7
B: KEY=70000 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
B: REL=3

First of all, it worries me that the "Phys" line is empty. Is this how it should be?
Furthermore: I thought that maybe the correct device file hadn't been make by udevd, so I figured I'd give it a try making it myself. By examining /sys/devices/virtual/input/input0/event0/dev (derived from the "Sysfs" line above) I found this "13:64". Just for testing I made a device file by issuing this command:

Code:

sudo mknod testnode c 13 64

...and referenced this in xorg.conf. Don't know if the numbers I found is even closely related to minor major numbers, though. I knew it was a long shot, and of course it wasn't much of a success.
I see that the "Sysfs" line point to a directory path I've found under /sys.

Do as you can see, I'm kind of out of ideas, and would very much like some help on this issue.

Regards,
kenneho