I have a Dell XPS m1530 that is running OpenSUSE 11 (i586) with this kernel: Linux 2.6.25.11-0.1-default i686. Whenever I touch the trackpad, there is what seems like a flurry of random input. The pointer will erratically flail all over the screen, windows are moved, context menus flash open and closed and options are selected form the context menus. There seems to be some kind of keyboard input that is submitted as well. I had a GTalk window open while using GMail and the letter ‘Y’ was scrolling across my text box as if the key was depressed. At one point, I inadvertantly brushed against the trackpad while FireFox was open and I had a dialog box pop up that said something about 'Pressing F7 activates…blah blah, are you sure… blah blah". The problem was that about a million of them were opened so I couldn’t close them and all other input to the machine was ignored. I eventually had to hold in the power button for a hard shutdown. I’m using an external mouse at the moment, which isn’t a big deal… but a mobile computer without the use of the trackpad is a bit handicapped. =)
I believe that the laptop is up-to-date via YaST. I don’t see the m1530 on the HCL, but the m1330 is which I think is essentially the same just with a smaller screen. In the HCL, the m1330 shows alot of question marks across the row.
Has anyone had this issue? Anyone care to give me a few pointers that could help in resolving this?
It’s a feature that most of us disable, called ‘tapping’. Do a search for
that if you want gory details. Basically, tapping allows the pad to act
as a left-mouse button when you touch it, and it’s often set too sensitively.
The short answer is to edit the file ‘/etc/X11/xorg.conf’ and change existing line like:
Option “MaxTapTime” “180”
changing the value 180 (or whatever it is) to 0, which disables the feature entirely.
Then reboot.
Now the issue is that there is no line that says Option “MaxTapTime”. I have three “Input Device” sections that seem to correlate to a mouse; one of them for the external USB mouse and two others that say that it is a Synaptics device. I added the line under Section “Input Device” for the Synpatics mouse (first one and then both), but nothing has remedied the situation. I’ve even tried adding Option “TouchpadOff” “2” and messing with the Option “MaxTapTime” line as per the above mentioned thread. Frustratingly enough, during the edit of the “MaxTapTime” option something must have been done wrong because X refused to start the next time. Fun. :mad: BTW, Everytime I mess with one of the settings I’m simply restarting X with Ctrl-Alt-Backspace… is a full reboot required? Seems unlikely.
I’ve tried a plethora of live CDs including Knoppix, Ubuntu, Fedora Core 9, and CentOS 5.2 and each of them had the same problem. However, there was one live CD from which the touchpad worked fine: Helix (the forensic recovery CD). Now I just need to figure out what the difference between the two is.
The xorg.conf file has a warning at the top that says not to edit it because it was created by ISaX 8.1. I went to the GUI SaX2 utility and noticed that there were three tabs for mice. I didn’t see anywhere where I could edit an option for some kind of touchpad tap feature.
The above mentioned thread included this line: “If you use kde you can install ksynaptics, then you can change settings from kde control center.” but I haven’t gone down that road yet.
My experience with Touchpad is exactly same. X server failed
to load after I changed my xorg.conf and I had to re-install the system (Rescue did not work). I tried to configure it from
Sax but then nvdia settings were lost mysteriously and I had to reinstall it again.
Did you notice Touchpad works fine in Failsafe mode (default kernel)?
I suggest that you try to remove the extra input devices that do not correspond to a device you know exists. So, if there are more than one Synaptics touchpads in the pointing device configuration, remove the extras. Then you should be able to use normal GUI mouse configuration to tweak the settings (I just used KDE4’s config and it worked for me).
There are two ways to improve your touchpad
1 Applications -> System -> Configuration ->Configure X11 System (SaX2)
Select mouse setting and enable third tab settings instead of second (don’t change anything)
2 Edit xorg,conf file. Delete section with Mouse[3] and copy below
