Pointer problems on new ThinkPad

bogzab · 06-23-2015, 08:09 AM

New ThinkPad L450. New complete installation of Slackware64-Current.

Pointing device problems: Default X configuration results in:
1. Trackpoint device (red button) moves the mouse pointer OK but no reaction to the buttons (Left, Right or Centre) which sit below the spacebar and above the touchpad.
2. Touchpad area works fine for moving mnouse pointer (although I hate this device) and two ways of getting a left button press work here: (a) tap the touchpad or (b) click the bottom of the touchpad (yes, this is one of Lenovo's "ClickPads" which is clickable along the bottom).

The upshot of this is that only a left mouse-button click is available, no right- or centre-buttons or wheel emulations.

If I run the following command:

Code:

xinput set-button-map "SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad" 1 3 3 1 3 3

I can get the left- and right- buttons to assume (almost) normal function - ie a press on left gives the usual left-button reaction and a press on right gives the usual context menus etc. If I understand this correctly I am mapping the touchpad's physical buttons 4, 5 and 6 to mouse functions 1, 3 and 3. Not quite normal functionality since: (a) no drag functions work on the left and right buttons and (b) the middle button (physical 5) does nothing at all (check with xev - no button press or button release message but works OK in Windows so not a hardware fault).

I can also use the command:

Code:

synclient TouchpadOff=1

to turn off the hated touchpad pointer, although the button-click on the Clickpad still works and is in fact the only way of performing a left-drag operation.

What I want to achieve is to get left-button drag to work using the real left button as opposed to the clickpad-button which is quite awkward to use with fingers stretching from the trackpoint pointer to the clickpad "button". A secondary objective would be to get the middle button click to be seen by the system and thereby possibly get wheel emulation working.

A modified evdev driver is described here
https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/xf86-input-evdev-trackpoint/ and here https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=174127. This driver is said to deal with the "no middle mouse click" issue. The Arch package which provides this driver is (if I have understood correctly) a series of patches which are applied to the original driver code. I am not sure how to proceed
and attempt to patch the slackware-supplied evdev driver.

Does it make sense to try and fix this driver using this approach? Any hints
on how to proceed gratefully received.

bimboleum · 06-23-2015, 10:48 AM

Hi,
I don't know about the L450, but I have never had a problem with the trackpoint and it's buttons working on many different thinkpad models.

However ....

1. I ALWAYS disable the touchpad in the BIOS
2. I have the following stanza in xorg.conf ...

Code:

Section "InputDevice"
    # generated from default
    Identifier     "Mouse0"
    Driver         "mouse"
    Option         "Protocol" "auto"
    Option         "Device" "/dev/psaux"
    Option         "Emulate3Buttons" "no"
    Option         "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection

3. I run xfce4 as my window manager

Any (or all) of these things could have an effect!

As usual YMMV.

cheers
pete

pete hilton
saruman@ruvolo-hilton.org

brianL · 06-23-2015, 11:17 AM

This works for me on my T410 and X200. Create ~/.xsessionrc with these contents:

Code:

xinput set-prop "TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint" "Evdev Wheel Emulation" 1
xinput set-prop "TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint" "Evdev Wheel Emulation Button" 2
xinput set-prop "TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint" "Evdev Wheel Emulation Timeout" 200
xinput set-prop "TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint" "Evdev Wheel Emulation Axes" 6 7 4 5
xinput set-prop "TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint" "Evdev Middle Button Emulation" 1
xinput set-prop "TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint" "Evdev Middle Button Timeout" 50

Got this from:
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/How_to...the_TrackPoint

a4z · 06-23-2015, 12:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by brianL

Got this from:
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/How_to...the_TrackPoint

I use the same docu but scrolled down to the xorg.conf.d section and place it in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d
and I have put a synaptic conf to it, it comes with slackware
cp /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-synaptics.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d

brianL · 06-23-2015, 01:25 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by a4z

I use the same docu but scrolled down to the xorg.conf.d section and place it in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d

Yeah, I was going to try that if the first method failed.

bogzab · 06-24-2015, 03:53 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bimboleum

Hi,
I don't know about the L450, but I have never had a problem with the trackpoint and it's buttons working on many different thinkpad models.

However ....

1. I ALWAYS disable the touchpad in the BIOS

Thanks for that advice. I gave this a try and found something very odd:
If I disable the trackpoint and enable the touchpad in BIOS, then I get a working touchpad but no trackpoint (as expected). But if I disable the touchpad and enable the trackpoint in BIOS then BOTH devices are still working (not just in X but from the start as soon as gpm starts). Suggests that a driver is by-passing BIOS settings and talking direct to hardware which I though was something that never happens these days. Windows drivers seem to respect BIOS setting because you see the correct behaviour of the devices when you boot into Windows rather than Slackware.

Makes me think that I do have a buggy version of a driver here, although not sure whether its the evdev driver or the synaptics driver which is causing problems. The Arch fix referred to above patches both IIRC.

Irrespective of the strange BIOS behaviour I also tried your xorg.conf config and using xfce rather than KDE - but none of this helped in my particular set-up.