Asus K53 Elan Touchpad and Media Keys

English Hardware
1

Good morning everyone. I have recently purchased a k53 Asus laptop it has a the new amd a6 processor and I am generally satisfied with OpenSUSE’s performance excepting 2 areas.
1)The touchpad is not correctly recognized by openSUSE. It recognizes it as a PS/2 Logitech Whell Mouse (/dev/input/mice). I have tried various Xorg Modifications and followed quite a few posts for openSUSE as well as other distributions and not been able to get anything other than basic functionality. No vertical scroll, no 2/3 finger tap.
My Xorg is

Section "ServerLayout"
        Identifier     "aticonfig Layout"
        Screen      0  "aticonfig-Screen[0]-0" 0 0
        InputDevice     "Touchpad"
EndSection

Section "Module"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
        Identifier   "aticonfig-Monitor[0]-0"
        Option      "VendorName" "ATI Proprietary Driver"
        Option      "ModelName" "Generic Autodetecting Monitor"
        Option      "DPMS" "true"
EndSection

Section "Device"
        Identifier  "aticonfig-Device[0]-0"
        Driver      "fglrx"
        BusID       "PCI:0:1:0"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
        Identifier "aticonfig-Screen[0]-0"
        Device     "aticonfig-Device[0]-0"
        Monitor    "aticonfig-Monitor[0]-0"
        DefaultDepth     24
        SubSection "Display"
                Viewport   0 0
                Depth     24
        EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
        Identifier      "Touchpad"
        Driver          "synaptics"
        Option          "Device"                "/dev/input/event*"
        Option          "Protocol"              "auto-dev"
        Option          "VertTwoFingerScroll"   "1"
        Option          "HorizTwoFingerScroll"  "1"
        Option          "TapButton1"            "1"
        Option          "TapButton2"            "2"
        Option          "TapButton3"            "3"
        Option          "SHMConfig" "true"
EndSection

I have tried to point the Device to /dev/input/mice and /dev/input/mouse however the message is always the same. OpenSUSE does not recognize the touchpad as a touchpad much less synaptics compatible.

2)Less importantly the media keys on the keyboard do not function. These include the volume keys, play/pause… The interesting thing is that the dim display, and wireless function key combinations work fine.

Just some extra details I am using KDE 4.7.0 the install was a clean install not an upgrade as the computer was new.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks

2

Did you set your keyboard to Asus?
system settings—hardware—input devices—keyboard
system settings—hardware—input devices—touchpad

My xorg.conf on a Asus X70A with OpenSuse 11.4 64-bit and KDE 4.7:

cat /etc/X11/xorg.conf
Section "ServerLayout"
        Identifier     "aticonfig Layout"
        Screen      0  "aticonfig-Screen[0]-0" 0 0
EndSection

Section "Module"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
        Identifier   "aticonfig-Monitor[0]-0"
        Option      "VendorName" "ATI Proprietary Driver"
        Option      "ModelName" "Generic Autodetecting Monitor"
        Option      "DPMS" "true"
EndSection

Section "Device"
        Identifier  "aticonfig-Device[0]-0"
        Driver      "fglrx"
        BusID       "PCI:1:0:0"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
        Identifier "aticonfig-Screen[0]-0"
        Device     "aticonfig-Device[0]-0"
        Monitor    "aticonfig-Monitor[0]-0"
        DefaultDepth     24
        SubSection "Display"
                Viewport   0 0
                Depth     24
        EndSubSection
EndSection
3

Thanks Sauerland for your reply. I actually do have it set to the Asus Laptop option and no change. The interesting thing is when I run

xev | grep -A2 --line-buffered '^KeyRelease' | sed -n '/keycode /s/^.*keycode \([0-9]*\).* (.*, \(.*\)).*$/\1 \2/p'

I get nothing when pressing the media keys. It is like the keyboard is off. The monitor brightness keys work though. Who knows what ASUS has done to these keys and why they wouldn’t send the standard events.

I noticed your xorg.conf file had no entry for the touchpad. Does your touchpad work with 2 finger scroll and everything?

4

Make it by your own in systemsettings—global shortcuts (please search for it because I have a German layout)
Mark kmix and set it to your media-keys.

5

Ive had the same probs my keyboard on my sony vio laptop is listed as unknown. and in the keyboard area sony isent a option to select on manufacturer

6

@OP: you definitely need to select “asus-laptop” as the keyboard. It may require a re-login. That makes the Fn keys etc. work.

On the touchpad: you don’t tell whether it functions normally. If so, leave it like it is.

7

Thank you everyone for your help. I have set the keyboard to Asus and still does not work. Running it through the xev command nothing is even registered. However, I have come up with a halfway solution. Never mind the function key, I have made use of a worthless Windows key on my keyboard. Since I don’t use it to shortcut anything else it has turned into my function key.

As for the touchpad what works is that I can move the mouse with it and single tap as well as the buttons. What does not work are any scrolling action or 2-3 finger gestures.

8

I got the media keys (volume up, volume down and mute) working with this.
open a console window and enter “git clone git://git.iksaif.net/acpi4asus-dkms.git”
change in the new directory acpi4asus-dkms and enter “make”
When the make process finished without any error message do a “make install” as root.
After a reboot the multimedia keys on my ASUS K53SJ worked just fine.
But just one other thing. Does your smartcard reader work? Mine didn’t.
If not just look at the ASUS Homepage for a driver named rts5139
Good luck

9

tomaz@linux-wrvi:~> git clone git://git.iksaif.net/acpi4asus-dkms.git
Cloning into acpi4asus-dkms…
remote: Counting objects: 239, done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (169/169), done.
remote: Total 239 (delta 112), reused 0 (delta 0)
Receiving objects: 100% (239/239), 70.90 KiB | 98 KiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (112/112), done.
tomaz@linux-wrvi:~> cd acpi4asus-dkms
tomaz@linux-wrvi:~/acpi4asus-dkms> make
make -C drivers/platform/x86 default
make[1]: Entering directory /home/tomaz/acpi4asus-dkms/drivers/platform/x86' make -C /lib/modules/2.6.37.6-0.7-desktop/build SUBDIRS=/home/tomaz/acpi4asus-dkms/drivers/platform/x86 asus-wmi.ko eeepc-wmi.ko asus-nb-wmi.ko eeepc-laptop.ko asus-laptop.ko make: Entering an unknown directory make: *** /lib/modules/2.6.37.6-0.7-desktop/build: No such file or directory. Stop. make: Leaving an unknown directory make[1]: *** [default] Error 2 make[1]: Leaving directory /home/tomaz/acpi4asus-dkms/drivers/platform/x86’
make: *** [default] Error 2

tjih iswhat i get when i try this command. why do i get the error reports, how do i make it work?

thanks in advance!!

10

ok, whatever. i managed. sorry for asking stupid questions. any new tips on the enableing the 2-finger scrolling thing?

11

It seems you don’t have the kernel sources installed on your machine.
you need the kernelsources to build the new module.