Comment 0 for bug 296610

On a Dell Latitude E6500. Ubuntu 8.10 32bit. Out of the box, the touchpad was almost unusably slow, taking 4 or 5 trips across the touchpad to traverse from one edge of the screen to the other. To remedy this, I create a file:

/etc/hal/fdi/policy/shmconfig.fdi

With the following contents:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<deviceinfo version="0.2">
 <device>
  <match key="input.x11_driver" string="synaptics">
   <merge key="input.x11_options.SHMConfig" type="string">true</merge>
  </match>
 </device>
</deviceinfo>

Then, I installed gsynaptics, and used System->Preferences->Touchpad to fix most of the usability issues.

The problem now is that occasionally, the mouse will 'flip out', make what seem to be some very fast unexpected movements, clicks, etc. When that is done, my settings as applied by gsynaptics will no longer be in effect - it will be back to the out-of-the-box slowness. Going back to System->Preferences->Touchpad will now result in a error about SHMConfig not being enabled.

To get around this, I can do 'modprobe -r psmouse; modprobe psmouse'. After this, gsynaptics will work again, and I can go back into it and reapply my settings. This is all a fairly big PITA, obviously. This behavior (touchpad going nuts, needing to restart psmouse) doesn't always happen, but seems to happen most when something intensive or tricky is going on (e.g., it happens especially often when VMWare is running (note: Intrepid is the host - the guest is Vista SP1). But it happens sometimes when not running VMWare, as well. At the time when it flips out, lots of the following can be seen in /var/log/messages:

Nov 7 22:23:02 peapod kernel: [46966.773325] psmouse.c: DualPoint TouchPad at isa0060/serio1/input0 lost sync at byte 1
Nov 7 22:23:02 peapod kernel: [46966.781168] psmouse.c: DualPoint TouchPad at isa0060/serio1/input0 - driver resynched.
Nov 7 22:23:03 peapod kernel: [46966.797747] psmouse.c: DualPoint TouchPad at isa0060/serio1/input0 lost sync at byte 5
Nov 7 22:23:03 peapod kernel: [46966.798897] psmouse.c: DualPoint TouchPad at isa0060/serio1/input0 lost sync at byte 1
Nov 7 22:23:03 peapod kernel: [46966.805873] psmouse.c: DualPoint TouchPad at isa0060/serio1/input0 - driver resynched.
Nov 7 22:23:03 peapod kernel: [46966.836835] psmouse.c: DualPoint TouchPad at isa0060/serio1/input0 lost sync at byte 5
Nov 7 22:23:03 peapod kernel: [46966.838003] psmouse.c: DualPoint TouchPad at isa0060/serio1/input0 lost sync at byte 1
Nov 7 22:23:03 peapod kernel: [46966.845904] psmouse.c: DualPoint TouchPad at isa0060/serio1/input0 - driver resynched.
Nov 7 22:23:03 peapod kernel: [46966.887985] psmouse.c: DualPoint TouchPad at isa0060/serio1/input0 lost sync at byte 5
Nov 7 22:23:03 peapod kernel: [46966.901704] psmouse.c: DualPoint TouchPad at isa0060/serio1/input0 lost sync at byte 6
Nov 7 22:23:03 peapod kernel: [46966.914422] psmouse.c: DualPoint TouchPad at isa0060/serio1/input0 lost sync at byte 3
Nov 7 22:23:03 peapod kernel: [46966.927091] psmouse.c: DualPoint TouchPad at isa0060/serio1/input0 lost sync at byte 3
Nov 7 22:23:03 peapod kernel: [46966.928246] psmouse.c: DualPoint TouchPad at isa0060/serio1/input0 lost sync at byte 1
Nov 7 22:23:03 peapod kernel: [46966.928250] psmouse.c: issuing reconnect request
Nov 7 22:23:04 peapod kernel: [46968.011977] input: DualPoint Stick as /devices/platform/i8042/serio1/input/input21
Nov 7 22:23:04 peapod kernel: [46968.069743] input: AlpsPS/2 ALPS DualPoint TouchPad as /devices/platform/i8042/serio1/input/input22

The above is just a snippet, up to the end of the event. Nothing interesting seems to happen at the beginning, just lots more lines like those above.

Please let me know if I can provide you with any additional information or try any procedures. Thank you.