scrolling issues using touchpad

Binary package hint: xserver-xorg-input-synaptics

1. When I move my finger from the left to right side and (accidentally) touching the scrolling area (on the right side) on the touchpad, the cursor jumps to the far right of the screen. This only happens when I'm moving my finger into the scrolling area, a single (or double) tap in the scrolling area doesn't do anything.

2. This concerns 'continuous scrolling' (I think it's called). First: in 9.10 I hadn't continuous scrolling activated (by default?), in 10.04 it is. But this isn't the issue. To do a continuous scrolling you do a long stroke up or down, and it continuous to scroll up or down. The problem is that it seems to continue to scroll until a tap/click is made. This often results in a in or out zooming of webpages in chrome, e.g.

First I scroll down a page, then I scroll up. And everything is fine. But when I am about to enter a different web address, using CTRL+L, the page zooms in (CTRL+scroll) continuously.

or

in Compiz desktop zoom: I've just scrolled up a page in Chrome and I'm going use the Scale function (Super+Tab). As soon as I'm pressing the Super button, Compiz zooms in.

Now, 1 and 2 are on one hand two different issues but since they both occurred after I upgraded to 10.04 and that I can't figure out how to change these behaviours, I'm filing them as one bug. Maybe there is a way of fixing this with udev rules or something, but I don't know how to do that.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.04
Package: xserver-xorg-input-synaptics 1.2.2-1ubuntu4
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.32-22.36-generic 2.6.32.11+drm33.2
Uname: Linux 2.6.32-22-generic i686
Architecture: i386
Date: Wed Jun 9 11:18:58 2010
DkmsStatus:
 vboxdrv, 3.2.4, 2.6.32-22-generic, i686: installed
 vboxnetflt, 3.2.4, 2.6.32-22-generic, i686: installed
 vboxnetadp, 3.2.4, 2.6.32-22-generic, i686: installed
Lsusb:
 Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
 Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
 Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
 Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
 Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
MachineType: LG Electronics F1-22PTV
PccardctlIdent:
 Socket 0:
   no product info available
PccardctlStatus:
 Socket 0:
   no card
ProcCmdLine: root=UUID=e0f735bb-287d-4413-bfca-9800b20f3a8e ro quiet splash
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_GB.utf8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: xserver-xorg-input-synaptics
dmi.bios.date: 09/01/2006
dmi.bios.vendor: American Megatrends Inc.
dmi.bios.version: A1034IL1 V1.20 09/01/06
dmi.board.name: MS-1034
dmi.board.vendor: MICRO-STAR INT'L CO.,LTD.
dmi.board.version: N/A
dmi.chassis.asset.tag: No Asset Tag
dmi.chassis.type: 10
dmi.chassis.vendor: MICRO-STAR INT'L CO.,LTD.
dmi.chassis.version: N/A
dmi.modalias: dmi:bvnAmericanMegatrendsInc.:bvrA1034IL1V1.2009/01/06:bd09/01/2006:svnLGElectronics:pnF1-22PTV:pvrLG-1034:rvnMICRO-STARINT'LCO.,LTD.:rnMS-1034:rvrN/A:cvnMICRO-STARINT'LCO.,LTD.:ct10:cvrN/A:
dmi.product.name: F1-22PTV
dmi.product.version: LG-1034
dmi.sys.vendor: LG Electronics
system:
 distro: Ubuntu
 codename: ...

Hi there, please specify information about the settings you are using in System>Prefrences>pointing devices. This will help us to reproduce the bug.

Then set the status of the bug as New again

I figured I'll give screenshots because I don't really know what you are looking for.

hnrkg, your information was helpful a bit but i'm still not able to reproduce the bug. I have the same driver xserver-xorg-inout-synaptics but there are no such unnatural behaviour.

To get more close to your bug hnrkg, I have a few points
1. Are you able to reproduce the bug now. I mean do still have the unusual behaviour.
2. The configration utility you are using is gsynaptics which is rather old now and ready to be removed from the universe. There appears to error in your gsynaptics. I would advice you to get a modern replacement of gsynaptics ie gpointing-device-settings. Try to search 'gsynaptics' in System>Aministration>Synaptics Package Manager . Install the gpointing-device-settings. Your gsynaptics will be automatically removed.

3.After trying this please see if you can reproduce the bug again.
4.Also try to verify if there is a error right in your hardware. hint- use some other os to confim..

Regards

I'll try to answer your questions as concise as possible.

1. Yes. I can reproduce the first and second issue.

2 and 3. However, after I installed gpointing-device-settings my second
issue is not reproducible. In fact, I cannot use 'continuous scrolling' at
all; enabling and disabling does not make a difference. Issue #1 is
unaffected and is still reproducible.

4. Non of the these issues seems to be present in Windows XP (I haven't dig
in to the detailed configuration). Then I started up Xubuntu 10.04 from a
USB stick where I find that the issues are reproducible.

I hope this helps.

I also am experiencing the first problem -- please let me know how and what I can submit to help reconstruct the issue. This is my first time filing bugs on launchpad, so sorry if I miss a beat ahead of time.

Currently, I am using the gpointing-device-settings and altered my settings in /usr/lib/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-synaptics.conf to specify my edge area. The specifics are here: http://swiss.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=9325430

hnrkg, one thing that I think may help the developers to identify the problem is if you could use the program xev to capture the input events that the xserver receives.

For #1, you can run `xev -geometry 900x100-0+120 > ~/xev.txt`. That will give you a 900 px wide and 100 pixel high window at the right hand side of the screen and events are captured as long as the mouse pointer is inside the window. Drag the mouse pointer right inside the window and make it jump all the way to the right, still within the window, by touching the scroll area. Close the window with Alt+F4 (in order to not generate more mouse pointer moving events). Take care to not drag the mouse pointer over the window any more than necessary during this, since it will create noise in the log. Upload xev.txt here.

I don't quite understand #2, but you could probably do something similar. I would anyway recommend focusing on #1 here, since having more than one issue in one bug report is strongly discouraged.

I tried to keep the cursor movements as "clean" possible. I can actually see
"the jump" in xev.txt from about the two last "MotionNotify" events at the
end of the file, but that's about it. Now, let's hope someone else sees more
than I do.

Well, #2 isn't really an issue anymore due to gpointing-device-settings;
let's just leave it and focus on #1 as Gier Ove Myhr proposed. Maybe I'll
file another bug for not being able to "scroll continuously" anymore.

Thank you. It is interesting that there are two jumps in the end which may indicate that it is a highly accelerated right movement rather than a move-all-the-way-to-the-right command.

I think we have more or less what we need to send this issue upstream. I read up a little yesterday and came over the program synclient, which should dump the state of the touchpad every X milliseconds. I don't have touchpad, so I can't try it, but you may see if you can get some useful output of that. See `man synclient` for how to use it. What I'm wondering about is whether a touch in the scroll area changes something in the hardware state or whether it is simply the driver that chooses to interpret touch in this area in a special way. This is may be obvious to someone who know more about touchpads and the synaptics driver than me.

If you can get anything useful from synclient, that would be nice. We should forward this upstream soon in any case.

Now I've tried synclient.

First I had to enable SHMConfig, which in 10.04 is done
in /usr/lib/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-synaptics.conf (I learned).

After running synclient -m 1 I moved my finger really slow towards the right
and between time 9.651 (x=5979) and time 9.691 (x=8176) the touchpad made
"the jump". Since this is the coordinates on the touchpad and no
acceleration is noticeable---there is an actual "jump"---the problem seems
to lay in the "transition" from the regular "move-the-cursor" area into the
scrolling area. The questions is why the cursor jumps and not just stops at
x=5979 when my finger enters the scrolling area?

qoute
"What I'm wondering about is whether a touch in the scroll area changes something in the hardware state or whether it is simply the driver that chooses to interpret touch in this area in a special way."

Geir, I don't think that the cursor jump is due to something related to hardware in the scroll area as the scroll area is generally implemented in software rather than in hardware. Touchpad generally send only x,y location and the driver has to detect the scroll area themselves and implement the scroll. This seems to be a driver issue.

You may be right, simar. I thought the synclient output showed the raw hardware output before the driver processes it, but it may be that the xev output and synclient output shows essentially the same. Anyway, we have enough data to forward this bug to the upstream developers. Would you like to do that, simar? (I see you are new at bug triage) If not, I will do it.

I found that this bug had already been reported upstream: https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=23890. You may register at http://bugs.freedesktop.org and add yourself to the CC-field of that bug report in order to receive updates. It seems they have already figured out what we have figured out here, but I'll link to the attachments here anyway.

The one think I can think about that may accelerate a solution is to git-bisect between 1.1.2 and 1.2.2 to find the commit that introduced this problem. Before that it may be worth reverting the ubuntu-sepcific patches to see if any of those cases the problem.

Thanks Geir Ove Myhr for offering me such things to forward a bug upstream but unfortunately I was out of station for a robotics based project of freescale. I would like if you watch me as a new triager and involve me further in doing such things so that I would be able to do it myself and hep in bug triaging.. You can view my email address in my launchpad profile.

Regards

I'd just like to add that this bug is also present in Ubuntu 10.10.

Hey Henrik,

Thanks for testing maverick during its development period. Unfortunately it looks like this bug report didn't get attention during the maverick development period. But I see there's not been more comments on the bug since the release, which makes me wonder if this is still an issue for you?

If you've not seen this issue since maverick's release yourself, it may have been solved by kernel or X or other updates that occurred late in the release; if so, would you mind please closing the bug for us? Go to the URL mentioned in this bug report, click the yellow icon(s) in the status column and set to 'Fix Released'.

If you no longer have the hardware needed to reproduce the problem, or otherwise feel the bug no longer needs tracked in Launchpad, you can set the status to 'Invalid'.

If you are the original reporter and still have this issue, just reply to this email saying so. (Or set the bug status to Confirmed.) If you are able to re-test this against 11.04 Natty Narwhal (our current development focus) and find the issue still affects Natty, please also run 'apport-collect <bug-number>' while running natty, which will add fresh logs and debug data, and flag it for the Ubuntu-X development team to look at.

First problem still exists. I still have this problem in my asus s96j.

Problem 1 is still present i Maverick.

2011/2/19 settle <email address hidden>:
> First problem still exists. I still have this problem in my asus s96j.
>
> --
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/591656
>
> Title:
>  scrolling issues using touchpad
>
> Status in XOrg-Driver-Synaptics - synaptics driver for XOrg:
>  Confirmed
> Status in “xserver-xorg-input-synaptics” package in Ubuntu:
>  Incomplete
>
> Bug description:
>  Binary package hint: xserver-xorg-input-synaptics
>
>  1. When I move my finger from the left to right side and
>  (accidentally) touching the scrolling area (on the right side) on the
>  touchpad, the cursor jumps to the far right of the screen. This only
>  happens when I'm moving my finger into the scrolling area, a single
>  (or double) tap in the scrolling area doesn't do anything.
>
>  2. This concerns 'continuous scrolling' (I think it's called). First:
>  in 9.10 I hadn't continuous scrolling activated (by default?), in
>  10.04 it is. But this isn't the issue. To do a continuous scrolling
>  you do a long stroke up or down, and it continuous to scroll up or
>  down. The problem is that it seems to continue to scroll until a
>  tap/click is made. This often results in a in or out zooming of
>  webpages in chrome, e.g.
>
>  First I scroll down a page, then I scroll up. And everything is fine.
>  But when I am about to enter a different web address, using CTRL+L,
>  the page zooms in (CTRL+scroll) continuously.
>
>  or
>
>  in Compiz desktop zoom: I've just scrolled up a page in Chrome and I'm
>  going use the Scale function (Super+Tab). As soon as I'm pressing the
>  Super button, Compiz zooms in.
>
>  Now, 1 and 2 are on one hand two different issues but since they both
>  occurred after I upgraded to 10.04 and that I can't figure out how to
>  change these behaviours, I'm filing them as one bug. Maybe there is a
>  way of fixing this with udev rules or something, but I don't know how
>  to do that.
>
>  ProblemType: Bug
>  DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.04
>  Package: xserver-xorg-input-synaptics 1.2.2-1ubuntu4
>  ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.32-22.36-generic 2.6.32.11+drm33.2
>  Uname: Linux 2.6.32-22-generic i686
>  Architecture: i386
>  Date: Wed Jun  9 11:18:58 2010
>  DkmsStatus:
>   vboxdrv, 3.2.4, 2.6.32-22-generic, i686: installed
>   vboxnetflt, 3.2.4, 2.6.32-22-generic, i686: installed
>   vboxnetadp, 3.2.4, 2.6.32-22-generic, i686: installed
>  Lsusb:
>   Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
>   Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
>   Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
>   Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
>   Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
>  MachineType: LG Electronics F1-22PTV
>  PccardctlIdent:
>   Socket 0:
>     no product info available
>  PccardctlStatus:
>   Socket 0:
>     no card
>  ProcCmdLine: root=UUID=e0f735bb-287d-4413-bfca-9800b20f3a8e ro quiet splash
>  ProcEnviron:
>   PATH=(custom, user)
>   LANG=en_GB.utf8
>   SHELL=/bin/bash
>  SourcePackage: xserver-xorg-...

hnrkg, this bug was reported a while ago and there hasn't been any activity in it recently. We were wondering if this is still an issue? If so, could you please test for this with the latest development release of Ubuntu? ISO images are available from http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/daily-live/current/ .

If it remains an issue, could you please run the following command in the development release from a Terminal (Applications->Accessories->Terminal), as it will automatically gather and attach updated debug information to this report:

apport-collect -p xserver-xorg-input-synaptics REPLACE-WITH-BUG-NUMBER

Please note, given that the information from the prior release is already available, doing this on a release prior to the development one would not be helpful.

Thank you for your understanding.

Helpful bug reporting tips:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ReportingBugs