Ubuntu
gnome-settings-daemon package

Synaptics touchpad randomly stops working

Bug #872885 reported by Doug McMahon
26
This bug affects 5 people
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
gnome-settings-daemon (Ubuntu)
Confirmed
Undecided
Unassigned

Bug Description

From time to time the touchpad stops working, usually noticed by the cursor 'freezing'
This has affected a number of users.
At least here & for some others disabling the option "Disable touchpad while typing" has apparently stopped this from happening, though due to the sporadic nature can't say for 100% sure. (tested here for 3 days, no occurrences

When it happens this frees up the cursor/touchpad
synclient TouchpadOff=0

Now have been enabling the option thru syncdaemon instead & again have seen no occurrences
To do so - first in a terminal disable syndaemon starting thru g-s-d

 gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.peripherals.touchpad disable-while-typing false

Then create a Startup Application,
gedit ~/.config/autostart/syndaemon.desktop

Using this currently, check man syndaemon for other possible options

[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Exec=syndaemon -d -K -R -i 0.5s
Hidden=false
NoDisplay=false
X-GNOME-Autostart-enabled=true
Name=touchpad1
X-GNOME-Autostart-Delay=6

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.10
Package: gnome-settings-daemon 3.2.0-0ubuntu5
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.0.0-13.21~lp844957v1-generic 3.0.6
Uname: Linux 3.0.0-13-generic i686
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
ApportVersion: 1.23-0ubuntu3
Architecture: i386
Date: Wed Oct 12 10:24:00 2011
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 11.10 "Oneiric Ocelot" - Beta i386 (20111007.1)
SourcePackage: gnome-settings-daemon
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

See original description
Revision history for this message
Doug McMahon (mc3man) wrote :
Revision history for this message
Sebastien Bacher (seb128) wrote :

thank you for your bug report, is that a duplicate of bug #868400?

Revision history for this message
Launchpad Janitor (janitor) wrote :

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

Changed in gnome-settings-daemon (Ubuntu):
status: New → Confirmed
Doug McMahon (mc3man)
description: updated
Revision history for this message
Mark Schroeder (earth2mark-eeepc) wrote :

I'm not convinced that this is a duplicate of " Bug #868400: Synaptics touchpad stops working - two syndaemon instances running." since I do not have two instances running that I can find (ps -ef doesn't show 2). Things I have noticed, though:

- I don't know that it's 100%, but it's much more frequent when "Disable mouse when typing" is set. This is my usual setting on boot since I use a USB mouse most of the time specifically because of this problem.

- It acts as if the touchpad is "locked" into some gesture state. In particular, when the mouse won't move, instead a one finger gesture on the touchpad results in TWO-finger vertical scrolling. I.e., as if it thought it was still in two finger mode when I'm only using one finger. (Was state saved/not cleared when the touchpad was enabled/disabled?) I've had other cases where some motion seemed to "reset" it to a known good and working state, but not reliably. But it looks like a state-holdover somewhere to me.

- The touchpad isn't "off" -- it is clearly responding and scrolling -- although it should be interpreting a single finger gesture to move the mouse, not to scroll as it is doing.

- I'm not positive about this, but I think I even had "enable mouse clicks by touchpad" set one time, and when in the bad state, it would not respond to mouseclicks either.

This is Ubuntu Desktop 32-bit, 12.04 and up to date as of 02/18/2013, on Asus 1215N netbook. The only odd thing about the install is this is the Nvidia Optimus graphics, so I have both Jupiter and Bumblebee installed, but only to disable the fast graphics Nvidia card (using Intel only) to save on battery and heat.

Settings are:
- Disable touchpad while typing
- Enable 2 finger (vertical) scrolling
- Speeds set all the way to left (slow)

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