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Synaptics (and other?) touchpads on Sid

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mzilikazi
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Synaptics (and other?) touchpads on Sid

#1 Post by mzilikazi »

So.... tapping has been disabled upstream in the xserver-xorg-input-synaptics package.
This is Debian Sid (unstable) but presumably this will roll down to testing & stable if it hasn't already.
You don't need "SHMConfig" in xorg.conf any longer.
http://wiki.debian.org/XStrikeForce/InputHotplugGuide
In fact, on my graphics card:

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lspci|grep Display
00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation Mobile GM965/GL960 Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03)
you don't need an xorg.conf at all since everything 'just works' with the exception of tapping on the Synaptics touchpad.

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zcat /usr/share/doc/xserver-xorg-input-synaptics/NEWS.Debian.gz
/snip/

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* Tapping has been disabled by default on many touchpads by upstream, see
    the "NOTES" section in the synaptics(4) manpage for a short overview
    about how defaults are calculated.
    If you want to re-enable it, you can do so from within the X
    environment by running the following commands in a terminal:

        $ synclient TapButton1=1
        $ synclient TapButton2=2
        $ synclient TapButton3=3
/snip/
OK then, we now know everything we need to set up the synaptics touchpad.

Synclient
Use synclient to view and change your current touchpad settings.
What's enabled at this moment?

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synclient -l
How to enable or disable something?
Simple, just tell synclient the variable you wish to change and its new value:

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synclient var1=value1
For example:

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synclient TapButton1=1
Calling Synclient Automatically
Once you come to like your touchpads behavior again, simply call it in a login script.
My script is called from ~/.config/autostart/synaptics.desktop

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more ~/.config/autostart/synaptics.desktop 

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[Desktop Entry]
Name=Tapping
Exec=/path/to/script/synaptics.sh
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Categories=
Hidden=true
The synaptics.sh script itself only calls what needs to be changed from the defaults.

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more /path/to/script/synaptic.sh

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#!/bin/bash
synclient TapButton1=1 TapButton2=2 TapButton3=3 VertEdgeScroll=1 VertScrollDelta=45 HorizEdgeScroll=1 HorizScrollDelta=45
Of course the script needs to be made executable w/ chmod +x synaptic.sh. Notice that you need really only call synclient once and simply seperate your variables with a space.

Xorg method
You can still call synaptics form xorg.conf as well.

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   Option   "TapButton1" "1" 
   Option   "TapButton2" "2" 
   Option   "TapButton3" "3" 
  Option   "TouchpadOff" "2" 
GUI Method gpointing-device-settings
To get your touchpad working the way you like it you have 3 choices, command line, xorg.conf or GUI but
my experience has been that gpointing-device-settings is unable to enable tapping which means you must
still call synclient from a startup script.

Gsynaptics is depracated and you'll find that the package in Sid is useless now.
The version in stable *should* still work.

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apt-cache policy gsynaptics
gsynaptics:
  Installed: (none)
  Candidate: 1.5.1-2
  Version table:
	 1.5.1-2 0
        500 http://mirrors.xmission.com sid/main Packages
     0.9.14-6 0
        500 http://mirrors.xmission.com stable/main Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
Instead...

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apt-get install gpointing-device-settings
The menu entry (wherever that is on your desktop) is called 'Pointing devices'
Of course it can also be called from the shell:

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gpointing-device-settings
BTW I still use touchfreeze to automatically disable the touchpad while typing.

To see what HAL knows about your touchpad use lshal.

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lshal|more
A quick way to find your touchpad in the rather large output is by using the '/' and search for 'touch'
Last edited by mzilikazi on 2010-04-15 04:33, edited 3 times in total.
Debian Sid Laptops:
AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual-Core Processor TK-55 / 1.5G
Intel(R) Pentium(R) Dual CPU T2390 @ 1.86GHz / 3G

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stkris
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Re: Synaptics (and other?) touchpads on Sid

#2 Post by stkris »

Gracias!

I've been wondering about this for several months since my xorg started to crash when I used SHMConfig in the conf file.
Two servers running Wheezy and Squeeze, two laptops (T61,G530) running Jessie and Squeeze.

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Re: Synaptics (and other?) touchpads on Sid

#3 Post by bluesdog »

Nice.

I'd been using a cordless mouse for a week or so, and hadn't noticed the tapping loss until yesterday

I didn't see your how-to, and found much of this on the Gentoowiki --

Since I'm using KDE, I just made a small script -- ~/.kde/Autostart/tapping.sh

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#!/bin/bash

synclient TapButton1=1
synclient TapButton2=2
synclient TapButton3=3
I tried editing/creating /etc/hal/fdi/policy/99-x11-synaptics.fdi

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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<deviceinfo version="0.2">
  <device>
    <match key="info.capabilities" contains="input.touchpad">
      <merge key="input.x11_options.SHMConfig" type="string">true</merge>
      <merge key="input.x11_options.RightEdge" type="string">870</merge>
      <merge key="input.x11_options.LeftEdge" type="string">153</merge>
      <merge key="input.x11_options.BottomEdge" type="string">652</merge>
      <merge key="input.x11_options.TopEdge" type="string">115</merge>
      <merge key="input.x11_options.HorizEdgeScroll" type="string">1</merge>
      <merge key="input.x11_options.VertEdgeScroll" type="string">1</merge>
      <merge key="input.x11_options.TapButton1" type="string">1</merge>
    </match>
  </device>
</deviceinfo>
But it seems to have no effect.

The little script works, tho'

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Re: Synaptics (and other?) touchpads on Sid

#4 Post by mzilikazi »

bluesdog wrote:Nice.

I'd been using a cordless mouse for a week or so, and hadn't noticed the tapping loss until yesterday

I didn't see your how-to, and found much of this on the Gentoowiki --

Since I'm using KDE, I just made a small script -- ~/.kde/Autostart/tapping.sh

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#!/bin/bash

synclient TapButton1=1
synclient TapButton2=2
synclient TapButton3=3
I wasn't exactly sure how the various desktop environs did autostart so I just went with what I knew. :) Now we know how KDE does it. It would be interesting to see if this works for other touchpads like the ALPS.
I tried editing/creating /etc/hal/fdi/policy/99-x11-synaptics.fdi

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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<deviceinfo version="0.2">
  <device>
    <match key="info.capabilities" contains="input.touchpad">
      <merge key="input.x11_options.SHMConfig" type="string">true</merge>
      <merge key="input.x11_options.RightEdge" type="string">870</merge>
      <merge key="input.x11_options.LeftEdge" type="string">153</merge>
      <merge key="input.x11_options.BottomEdge" type="string">652</merge>
      <merge key="input.x11_options.TopEdge" type="string">115</merge>
      <merge key="input.x11_options.HorizEdgeScroll" type="string">1</merge>
      <merge key="input.x11_options.VertEdgeScroll" type="string">1</merge>
      <merge key="input.x11_options.TapButton1" type="string">1</merge>
    </match>
  </device>
</deviceinfo>
But it seems to have no effect.

The little script works, tho'
I didn't create or edit any FDI files. I realize the Debian wiki mentions it, as do most howtos for this issue but fortunately (for me anyway) it was not necessary.
Debian Sid Laptops:
AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual-Core Processor TK-55 / 1.5G
Intel(R) Pentium(R) Dual CPU T2390 @ 1.86GHz / 3G

vgarciaf
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Re: Synaptics (and other?) touchpads on Sid

#5 Post by vgarciaf »

Works wonderfully.

Thanks a ton!

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demosthenese
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Re: Synaptics (and other?) touchpads on Sid

#6 Post by demosthenese »

I use the following script at login to set up my touchpad.

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#!/bin/bash

# Set multi-touch emulation parameters
xinput set-int-prop '"SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad"' "Synaptics Two-Finger Pressure" 32 10
xinput set-int-prop '"SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad"' "Synaptics Two-Finger Width" 32 8
xinput set-int-prop '"SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad"' "Two-Finger Scrolling" 8 1
xinput set-int-prop '"SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad"' "Synaptics Two-Finger Scrolling" 8 1 1

# Disable edge scrolling
xinput set-int-prop '"SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad"' "Synaptics Edge Scrolling" 8 0 0 0 

# This will make cursor not to jump if you have two fingers on the touchpad and you lift one
# (which you usually do after two-finger scrolling)
xinput set-int-prop '"SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad"' "Synaptics Jumpy Cursor Threshold" 32 110


# Set 1 2 and 3 finger taps
xinput set-int-prop '"SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad"' "Synaptics Tap Action" 8 0 0 0 0 1 3 2
Can't remember where I lifted it from. You may need to change the name of the pointer device 'SynPS/2 ...' to the one reported by

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xinput list
Edit:

a day after posting and xorg changes - above script now needs the double quotes around "'Syn...'" changed to single quotes 'Syn..' I remember thinking it odd that two sets of quotes were needed before.

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Re: Synaptics (and other?) touchpads on Sid

#7 Post by bluesdog »

Annoyingly for me, the latest (Sid) version of xserver-xorg-input-evdev (2.3.2-5) completely borked my touchpad and wacom tablet, forcing me to revert to the previous (Squeeze) version

Is xserver-xorg-input-evdev necessary for proper multi-input-device operation? :?

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Re: Synaptics (and other?) touchpads on Sid

#8 Post by mzilikazi »

bluesdog wrote:Annoyingly for me, the latest (Sid) version of xserver-xorg-input-evdev (2.3.2-5) completely borked my touchpad and wacom tablet, forcing me to revert to the previous (Squeeze) version

Is xserver-xorg-input-evdev necessary for proper multi-input-device operation? :?
I had the same issue with my Toshiba touchpad and came to the same (temporary) resolution - downgrade xserver-xorg-input-evdev to 1:2.3.2-4.
Guess we wait and see. Sid is always fun. :)

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apt-cache depends xserver-xorg|grep evdev
    xserver-xorg-input-evdev
  Depends: xserver-xorg-input-evdev
Debian Sid Laptops:
AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual-Core Processor TK-55 / 1.5G
Intel(R) Pentium(R) Dual CPU T2390 @ 1.86GHz / 3G

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Re: Synaptics (and other?) touchpads on Sid

#9 Post by bluesdog »

Hah! Yeah, I expect occasionaly breakage in Sid. I get to keep all the bits, anyway.

Can't help but wonder what kind of hardware is available to the xorg folks... I mean, don't they have access to at least one lappy with a touchpad? :roll:

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Re: Synaptics (and other?) touchpads on Sid

#10 Post by mzilikazi »

Everything seems to be back to normal after also upgrading xserver-xorg-input-synaptics to 1.2.2-1 and xserver-xorg-input-evdev 1:2.3.2-5
Debian Sid Laptops:
AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual-Core Processor TK-55 / 1.5G
Intel(R) Pentium(R) Dual CPU T2390 @ 1.86GHz / 3G

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Re: Synaptics (and other?) touchpads on Sid

#11 Post by mzilikazi »

All the cool kids seem to be using /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/ to set up synaptics these days. It's working here too.

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cat /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-synaptics.conf

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Section "InputClass"
        Identifier "touchpad catchall"
        Driver "synaptics"
        MatchIsTouchpad "on"
MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*"
Option "EmulateTwoFingerMinZ" "10"
Option "EmulateTwoFingerMinW" "7"
Option "VertTwoFingerScroll" "True"
Option "HorizTwoFingerScroll" "True"
Driver "synaptics"
EndSection


For Gnome

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gconftool-2 --set /desktop/gnome/peripherals/touchpad/scroll_method --type=int 2
Debian Sid Laptops:
AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual-Core Processor TK-55 / 1.5G
Intel(R) Pentium(R) Dual CPU T2390 @ 1.86GHz / 3G

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