Now that Slackware -current (post 12.0) is open and has Xorg-7.3 in it, some of you may have discovered that the third-party synaptics driver won't compile. This thread has a brief discussion of the problem, but it's not clear as to whether it's Xorg or synaptics that should change something: http://lists.freedesktop.org/archive...er/028523.html

The latest version of synaptics at http://web.telia.com/~u89404340/touchpad/ won't build at all, regardless of whether you make the needed changes as outlined later in this post, so you'll need to get the latest development version from git:
This post was written on 17 October 2007, so later versions may or may not compile correctly.

This will create a 'synaptics' directory in whatever directory from which you executed the above command. Before you can compile it, though, you must do this:

Open /usr/include/xorg/miscstruct.h with an editor (as root).
Line 54 looks like this:
Edit it to look like this:
Now change directory to the 'synaptics' directory created by the 'git clone' command above. All of the following should also be done as root.

Edit the last line (makepkg) to use the correct date and BUILD tag (not _rlw).

You can now install that package normally (it will be in /tmp).
Configuration of the synaptics driver (additions to xorg.conf and such) is left as an exercise to the reader :-)

You will probably also need to comment out the options line for the psmouse module in /etc/modprobe.d/psmouse -- it seems that the synaptics driver wants the default kernel options for the psmouse module (at least on my system).

Oh yeah, once you're finished, go change the /usr/include/xorg/miscstruct.h header back to its original version (just in case) :-)

Hi,

Thanks robby!

Hi, I tried to do as suggested ....

First the synaptics driver with altered /usr/include/xorg/miscstruct.h did not compile after upgrade to current... pixman not found. This because pixman was not installed as I had forgotten to use the option --install-new with upgradepkg (and thus had bypassed this new package; which I found out later when X did not start....)

Still, before that, I got the synaptics driver compiled, when I edited "#include <pixman.h>" to "#include <pixmap.h>"...
(In /usr/include/xorg/ there is no file pixman.h; only pixmap.h).

Now X is working and my synaptics driver behaves as expected

I also compiled a second driver as advised in above post and behaviour seems indistinguishable from that with the driver compiled against pixmap.....

Did I hit by accident on a (different) typo in the include of miscstruct.h ? Or is this include not needed at all?


By the way, I found another oddity... After upgrade my external USB mouse did no longer work. In the Section "ServerLayout" of my old xorg.conf it was classified as "InputDevice" "AlwaysCore", with the touchpad being "InputDevice" "CorePointer". If I swapped the AlwaysCore/CorePointer labels, only the USB mouse worked and the touchpad was dead. When I omitted the "AlwaysCore" classification for one of these two "InputDevice"s, the other being "CorePointer", both worked happily alongside each other.

hello rworkman,

Thanks you for your post.
But, on my slack current, synaptics don't work.
I made compiling synaptics-git with your process, and xorg work with the old xorg.conf.
The modules evdev and psmouse (without option) are loaded.
But, xorg does not want to work with him. See this part of Xorg.log:

After, the default pointer is loaded.

I worked one day on the problem, and I don't find the solution.

brobr:

pixman and pixmap are the same thing - you essentially pointed it at the old header, which is why it worked (at least, I think that's why) :-)

I don't know - make *sure* the psmouse module is not loading with imps as the protocol -- the only way I can reproduce the error you're seeing is to load psmouse with that protocol.

OK, it is my fault...
Before the update, I already used kernel-2.6.23.1, compiled myself.
In the update, all the modules were not crushed and there was confusion between kernel.

The kernel of current is compiled for i686 and I had compiled mine for amd-k8.

Mea culpa


The next time, I shall read the fucking logs! (newbie from 15 years)

thanks

ps: but I don't understand why I had no problems with the other modules?!?

I'm guessing that it's an xorg issue, as I can't get either the stable or testing driver to configure for linuxwacom. I tried applying the fix for pixman.h (ie, the <pixman-1/pixman.h> as the xorg patch was saying) and I get a new set of errors.

I can get some more info up if you guys think it'd matter, or I can start another thread.

How would I go about trying something like that with the wacom driver?

Nice hacking rworkman. Good job.

Thanks,
Edward

Any idea why I tried this and Xorg 7.3 + Synaptics still doesnt work?

I'm SLAMD64 btw, i made sure it used /usr/lib64 - indeed it does. It loads the module fine but says Query No Synaptics. I guess that means no dice.


Any suggestions? /etc/rc.d/rc.modules doesnt say proto=imps2 or anything, but boot pulls it up as an imps2 synaptics touchpad. It's included in the kernel by default.

Im probably just going to downgrade to xorg 7.2!!! Unless of course - someone has a solution?

This is too much hassle to mess with

Hey rworkman - I noticed you said 'newer versions may not compile or work correctly' can you by chance reference a link to the .tgz package you made that worked for you?

I had it working fine in the Xorg that came with v12.0
This is the default behavior for the psmouse driver, I tried setting the configuration file to NOT include the imps2 module of the mouse, and it forces it to. Theres nothing I can seemingly do to get psmouse to load without it loading as an imps2 device.

Well, Slackware ships an /etc/modprobe.d/psmouse file that looks like this:
If you haven't done what it says to use the kernel defaults, then there's your problem.

OMG it works thanks so much

OMG - thank you, Robby Workman. I was about to pull my hair out after upgrading to -current.

You're welcome.

Since the original post, I've located some patches (thanks to the good folks over at Gentoo) that will make the 0.14.6 stable release of synaptics build and function just fine. I've got a package and sources at my personal site (see link below).

subscribed for future reference. Thanks, man !