TC 3.6 on EEEPC 701: synaptics touchpad not recognized by the kernel

[avivt]

Hello everyone.

I am trying to adapt TC to my beloved (and a bit old) eeepc 701 4G. I chose to use full Xorg for three reasons:

1. to use XKB (I speak hebrew)
2. to use edge scrolling and/or two-finger scrolling on the touchpad and
3. help mplayer with zoomed playback.

I use Xorg's autoconfiguration, i.e. no xorg.conf

In contrast to my current archlinux setup, edge scrolling and two-finger scrolling are not automatically activated in Xorg. Investigating, I noticed the following:

1. synclient denies existance of any applicable devices.
2. In arch, dmesg mentions detection of a PS2 mouse, and then later, identifies it as a synaptics device. In TC dmesg only mentions detection of a PS2 mouse, without any mention of synaptics.
3. googling, I found a gentoo wiki mention that the psmouse.ko module might need loading. Indeed, on lsmod in arch, psmouse is loaded. in TC it is not listed in lsmod.
4. searching through /lib/modules and /usr/local/lib/modules, I could not find psmouse.ko.
5. In appbrowser I searched for psmouse both by search and provides. found nothing.

The suggestion to use the psmouse.proto kernel parameter (which I confirmed to be unhelpful for the eeepc 701 with xvesa, in contrast with the 900 series) makes me wonder if this module has been statically compiled into the kernel. I can see the following in the config file for TC kernel, which might be relevant:

CONFIG_INPUT_MOUSE=y
CONFIG_MOUSE_PS2=y
.......
CONFIG_MOUSE_PS2_SYNAPTICS=y
.......
# CONFIG_MOUSE_SYNAPTICS_I2C is not set

I suspect that my next option is a kernel recompilation with psmouse as a module, which I just might attempt.

My questions for the forum at this point are quite general:

1. Does all that make any sense
2. Did I miss an important diagnostic step that might point to a better/simpler solution?
3. Did anyone succeed previously in solving this problem? Any other 701 users about?
4. Can touchpad recognition be helped with psmouse kernel parameters? which?
5. might just enabling CONFIG_MOUSE_SYNAPTICS_I2C help? Is it at all relevant?
6. Advice/Warnings

Thanks all,
Aviv

[tinypoodle]

if you search the forum you might find most of your questions answered.

BTW, mplayer zoomed playback works perfectly well with Xvesa.

[Rich]

Hi avivt
I can't give you a solution but maybe some clues. Xorg7.5 provides the following:
/usr/local/lib/X11/modules/input/synaptics_drv.so
Maybe you need to manually set up a xorg.conf.
For xorg7.4 there is synaptics.tcz in the repository.

[Juanito]

Here's an example showing only the relevent sections of xorg.conf:

Code: [Select]

Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "X.org Configured"
Screen      0  "Screen0" 0 0
InputDevice "DualPoint Stick" "CorePointer"
InputDevice "Alps Touchpad"  "SendCoreEvents"
InputDevice "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier  "DualPoint Stick"
Driver      "evdev"
Option    "Device" "/dev/input/event5"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Alps Touchpad"
Driver   "synaptics"
Option "Device"   "/dev/input/event6"
Option "SHMConfig" "true"
Option "GuestMouseOff" "false"
Option "TouchpadOff" "1"
EndSection
Note that it this example I'm turning the touchpad off and only using the pointing stick, but it should give you an idea of what to do. You can find out which inputs your touchpad uses by looking at "cat /proc/bus/input/devices".

If you use Xorg-7.5 the synaptics driver is included.

[OldAdamUser2]

I prefer xvesa (smaller, lighter, faster), but I have to confess that I tried at one time to configure xorg in Tiny Core for the eee900--and failed. I can boot Puppy into xorg and also Knoppix and Xandros. But Tiny Core is so much faster and better that I just use xvesa -- unless some software demands that I boot into xorg.

[avivt]

Ladies and Gentlement, It's time for my to apologize to the forum.

A series of deficiencies on my part, the most prominent of whic is the careless use of "dmesg | grep syn" when looking for Synaptics (upper case), have led me to waste your time, focus and good will. It never was a kernel issue. It just was Xorg not loading the Synaptics driver.

Juanito sent me back on a track I previously failed, the xorg.conf road. More persistance, and it works! I now have two-finger scrolling working, and synclient is willing to talk to me. Thank you Juanito.

My current xorg.conf is a mess and I'm travelling. I hope I'll trim it a bit and post it in, say, a week for the next poor soul trying to config a first generation eeepc...

Thanks!