Comment 21 for bug 296610

If there was a way to disable the trackpoint, it might help. I also notice
that if you click both left mouse buttons that it locks.

Robert Hau
West Highland Support Services
Desk: (866)778-3484 x157
Cell: (917)657-0686
Email: <email address hidden>

----- Original Message -----
From: <email address hidden> <email address hidden>
To: <email address hidden> <email address hidden>
Sent: Tue Oct 06 12:19:30 2009
Subject: [Bug 296610] Re: ALPS DualPoint Touchpad flaky performance

Nothing new to add regarding the bug, just something I found easing the
pain a little for me.

'm on Arch in the meanwhile but I think the issue is the same. At some
point the psmouse driver crashes and loads a generic one. If this
happens the Trackpoint scroll doesn't work anymore.

I usually fix the issue with the following commands to reload the
psmouse driver.

#(after this you cannot use your mouse anymory temporarily)
sudo modprobe -rvf psmouse
#and reload the driver:
sudo modprobe -vf psmouse

--
ALPS DualPoint Touchpad flaky performance
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/296610
You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
of the bug.

Status in “linux” package in Ubuntu: Confirmed

Bug description:
On a Dell Latitude E6500. Ubuntu 8.10 32bit. Out of the box, the touchpad
was almost unusably slow, taking 4 or 5 trips across the touchpad to
traverse from one edge of the screen to the other. To remedy this, I create
a file:

/etc/hal/fdi/policy/shmconfig.fdi

With the following contents:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<deviceinfo version="0.2">
 <device>
  <match key="input.x11_driver" string="synaptics">
   <merge key="input.x11_options.SHMConfig" type="string">true</merge>
  </match>
 </device>
</deviceinfo>

Then, I installed gsynaptics, and used System->Preferences->Touchpad to fix
most of the usability issues.

The problem now is that occasionally, the mouse will 'flip out', make what
seem to be some very fast unexpected movements, clicks, etc. When that is
done, my settings as applied by gsynaptics will no longer be in effect - it
will be back to the out-of-the-box slowness. Going back to
System->Preferences->Touchpad will now result in a error about SHMConfig not
being enabled.

To get around this, I can do 'modprobe -r psmouse; modprobe psmouse'. After
this, gsynaptics will work again, and I can go back into it and reapply my
settings. This is all a fairly big PITA, obviously. This behavior
(touchpad going nuts, needing to restart psmouse) doesn't always happen, but
seems to happen most when something intensive or tricky is going on (e.g.,
it happens especially often when VMWare is running (note: Intrepid is the
host - the guest is Vista SP1). But it happens sometimes when not running
VMWare, as well. At the time when it flips out, lots of the following can
be seen in /var/log/messages:

Nov 7 22:23:02 peapod kernel: [46966.773325] psmouse.c: DualPoint TouchPad
at isa0060/serio1/input0 lost sync at byte 1
Nov 7 22:23:02 peapod kernel: [46966.781168] psmouse.c: DualPoint TouchPad
at isa0060/serio1/input0 - driver resynched.
Nov 7 22:23:03 peapod kernel: [46966.797747] psmouse.c: DualPoint TouchPad
at isa0060/serio1/input0 lost sync at byte 5
Nov 7 22:23:03 peapod kernel: [46966.798897] psmouse.c: DualPoint TouchPad
at isa0060/serio1/input0 lost sync at byte 1
Nov 7 22:23:03 peapod kernel: [46966.805873] psmouse.c: DualPoint TouchPad
at isa0060/serio1/input0 - driver resynched.
Nov 7 22:23:03 peapod kernel: [46966.836835] psmouse.c: DualPoint TouchPad
at isa0060/serio1/input0 lost sync at byte 5
Nov 7 22:23:03 peapod kernel: [46966.838003] psmouse.c: DualPoint TouchPad
at isa0060/serio1/input0 lost sync at byte 1
Nov 7 22:23:03 peapod kernel: [46966.845904] psmouse.c: DualPoint TouchPad
at isa0060/serio1/input0 - driver resynched.
Nov 7 22:23:03 peapod kernel: [46966.887985] psmouse.c: DualPoint TouchPad
at isa0060/serio1/input0 lost sync at byte 5
Nov 7 22:23:03 peapod kernel: [46966.901704] psmouse.c: DualPoint TouchPad
at isa0060/serio1/input0 lost sync at byte 6
Nov 7 22:23:03 peapod kernel: [46966.914422] psmouse.c: DualPoint TouchPad
at isa0060/serio1/input0 lost sync at byte 3
Nov 7 22:23:03 peapod kernel: [46966.927091] psmouse.c: DualPoint TouchPad
at isa0060/serio1/input0 lost sync at byte 3
Nov 7 22:23:03 peapod kernel: [46966.928246] psmouse.c: DualPoint TouchPad
at isa0060/serio1/input0 lost sync at byte 1
Nov 7 22:23:03 peapod kernel: [46966.928250] psmouse.c: issuing reconnect
request
Nov 7 22:23:04 peapod kernel: [46968.011977] input: DualPoint Stick as
/devices/platform/i8042/serio1/input/input21
Nov 7 22:23:04 peapod kernel: [46968.069743] input: AlpsPS/2 ALPS DualPoint
TouchPad as /devices/platform/i8042/serio1/input/input22

The above is just a snippet, up to the end of the event. Nothing
interesting seems to happen at the beginning, just lots more lines like
those above.

Please let me know if I can provide you with any additional information or
try any procedures. Thank you.