Touchpad failure on karmic netbook (occasionally)

[Iskendar]

Hi all,

I'm running kubuntu netbook 9.10 on an asus eee 1001h, and I'm having some trouble with the touchpad not working. The weird thing is that this only happens occasionally: I'd start up the system and the touchpad doesn't work, I reboot and everything is fine. Restarting the x-server doesn't do it, neither by restarting kdm nor by stopping it and running startx. When I look into /var/log/Xorg.0.log, I get this:

(II) Cannot locate a core pointer device.
(II) Cannot locate a core keyboard device.
(II) The server relies on HAL to provide the list of input devices.
    If no devices become available, reconfigure HAL or disable AllowEmptyInput.

This problem never occurs when the system is running, only at startup, so I doubt there's a hardware failure. As I said, rebooting solves the problem, until a couple of restarts later (I haven't figured out any periodicity yet )

I suppose writing an explicit xorg.conf (9.10 ditched xorg.conf and apparently relies on HAL for its input devices) might fix this, though I am puzzled as to why this problem happens. Anyone familiar with the new xorg startup procedures care to explain? Thanks.

[Zorael]

Re: Touchpad failure on karmic netbook (occasionally)

Anything about psmouse in dmesg?

Can you restart the module?

$ sudo modprobe -r psmouse && sudo modprobe psmouse

During Karmic development my touchpad picked up the habit of dying intermittently, and dmesg showed it freaking out over bad packets. I got around it by passing an option to psmouse to reset the pad after 10 of them.

In /etc/modprobe.d/options.conf;

options psmouse resetafter=10

At that time, removing and reprobing the module (as up above) fixed it until it broke again. I haven't tried removing (the option) since, and I likely won't until I install Lucid, once it hits beta.

(Or until my unhealthy urge to run the latest and greatest suckers me into it.)

[Iskendar]

Re: Touchpad failure on karmic netbook (occasionally)

Anything about psmouse in dmesg?

No psmouse loaded. At least when the error occurs. Loading it manually runs the module (it shows up in lsmod), but the cursor doesn't move, even when I restart the x-server (tried both /etc/init.d/kdm restart, and when that didn't work, kdm stop and then startx). Didn't try your option yet, but I was on the train at the time: no internet. Again, rebooting solved it.

[Iskendar]

Re: Touchpad failure on karmic netbook (occasionally)

Ok, tried the option.conf, same problem: nothing but a reboot seems to help.