Wednesday, November 30, 2011

How to Restore Notebook Synaptics/Touchpad Not Working in Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric / Linux Mint 12 Lisa

Sometimes the desktop in several Linux distributions freezes for no apparent reason; active windows can still be used, and the mouse pointer can be moved around, but clicking is impossible. Furthermore, your touchpad can no longer be controlled; the ‘Touchpad’ tab disappears from the System / Preferences / Mouse menu. Even if mouse functionality eventually returns, the touchpad remains uncontrollable. This extremely annoying bug occurs randomly and may last for a couple of seconds, or until you restart your X server.

I am facing this problem on a HP Pavilion dv6 Quad Core Edition on Linux Mint 12 Lisa 64-bit.

If you check your system’s log after such an event (/var/log/messages) you will notice a few entries similar to these:

Sep  9 09:38:15 umbra kernel: [ 4939.006198] psmouse.c: DualPoint TouchPad at isa0060/serio1/input0 lost sync at byte 1
Sep  9 09:38:15 umbra kernel: [ 4939.012220] psmouse.c: DualPoint TouchPad at isa0060/serio1/input0 - driver resynched.

Basically this indicates an IRQ conflict between your mouse and your touchpad. This is a Linux kernel bug (I am currently using 2.6.28) and as such it affects most distributions. An easy way to recover both mouse and touchpad functionality without having to restart your X server is restarting the mouse driver. Run the following commands on a terminal window:

sudo rmmod psmouse
sudo modprobe psmouse

If there is no terminal window open, you can use one of the following:

  • In Gnome or KDE, press Alt + F2, type gnome-terminal and press Enter
  • Press Control + Alt + F1, login with your username and password, type the commands, then press Control + Alt + F7 to get back to X

Hopefully a future kernel release will fix this problem for good.

You can learn more about Ubuntu in Ubuntu Unleashed 2011 Edition: Covering 10.10 and 11.04 (6th Edition) !

Source: http://xpapad.wordpress.com/2009/09/09/dealing-with-mouse-and-touchpad-freezes-in-linux/

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8 comments:

  1. Rishabh NigamJanuary 20, 2012 at 5:53 AM

    thnks helped me out

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. (16 Group 2) DawgkechaFebruary 18, 2012 at 11:33 AM

      Hi - I'm having the same problem. Has any new information come out about this?

      Delete
  2. AnonymousMay 14, 2012 at 8:31 PM

    Hi..Thanks dude for such useful piece of info

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousNovember 24, 2012 at 8:10 PM

    Thanks this worked in Mint 13

    ReplyDelete
  4. radeNovember 30, 2012 at 11:06 AM

    Thanks

    ReplyDelete
  5. KaranDecember 28, 2012 at 11:14 AM

    thanks

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. UnknownMarch 14, 2013 at 6:47 PM

      I tried all the things found on the net for my touchpad, if I added the options proto=imps, then my touchpad would loose scrolling and taping capabilities, plus I'd loose the touchpad tab in my mouse settings...

      Removing the psmouse module, and then adding it back worked, but I hated having to switch between screens to get it done.. Here's my workaround:

      1) create a script /usr/local/bin/mousereset
      2) setup sudo so that the modprobe can be executed by a standard user
      3) create a script: /usr/local/bin/mousereset with the following statements:
      sudo modprobe -r psmouse
      sudo modprobe psmouse
      4) chmod 777 /usr/local/bin/mousereset
      5) create a keyboard shortcut that calls this script.( I used CTRL-ALT-M)

      Now whenever my touchpad freezes, a simple CTRL-ALT-M resets my touchpad and gets it working again.

      Delete
  6. AnonymousAugust 7, 2013 at 10:18 PM

    Thanks! Works on Mint 15 kde

    ReplyDelete

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