Ubuntu – ELAN Touchpad not working on Lenovo IdeaPad with Ubuntu 16.04

16.04kernellenovotouchpad

Recently I bought a Lenovo IdeaPad (Intel i7 10th generation). I installed Ubuntu 16.04 on it, but at no point did the touchpad work for me! Also, initially I tried to install Ubuntu 18.04 and upgraded to the latest kernel, but not only the touchpad didn't work, also the graphics didn't work properly and I eventually decided to go back to 16.04.
I have not checked the touchpad on Windows, as I bought a DOS machine and put ubuntu on it instead.
The touchpad is not the only hardware on my laptop that's not working in ubuntu, but let's focus only on it for now.

From reading a little bit I found out that many new laptops have problems with their touchpads, mostly ElanTech hid ones.
It seems to me that my problem is similar to this post: ELAN Touchpad not working on Lenovo Thinkbook with Ubuntu 18.04.

Also, from the information in this post: Lenovo IdeaPad 330 touchpad not working, it seems the problem is that the id of my ELAN touchpad is not listed in the kernel, so Ubuntu doesn't recognize it at all!

About my system:
uname -srv gives:

Linux 4.15.0-74-generic #83~16.04.1-Ubuntu

xinput -list gives:

⎡ Virtual core pointer                      id=2    [master pointer  (3)]
⎜   ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer                id=4    [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ Logitech USB Optical Mouse                id=9    [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎣ Virtual core keyboard                     id=3    [master keyboard (2)]
    ↳ Virtual core XTEST keyboard               id=5    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Power Button                              id=6    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Power Button                              id=7    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Integrated Camera: Integrated C           id=8    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Ideapad extra buttons                     id=10   [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ AT Translated Set 2 keyboard              id=11   [slave  keyboard (3)]

Note that no touchpad is recognized by Ubuntu!
By running sudo acpidump | grep -C3 -i elan I was able to find my ELAN id, which is 0633, as seen here:

 27AA0: 59 53 0B DC 07 53 52 58 4F 0C 10 00 01 06 01 70  YS...SRXO......p
 27AB0: 47 4E 55 4D 0C 10 00 01 06 49 4E 54 31 70 49 4E  GNUM.....INT1pIN
 27AC0: 55 4D 0C 10 00 01 06 49 4E 54 32 A0 25 93 54 50  UM.....INT2.%.TP
 27AD0: 54 59 01 70 0D 45 4C 41 4E 30 36 33 33 00 5F 48  TY.p.ELAN0633._H
 27AE0: 49 44 70 0A 15 42 41 44 52 70 01 48 49 44 32 A4  IDp..BADRp.HID2.
 27AF0: 00 A0 27 93 54 50 54 59 0A 02 70 0D 53 59 4E 41  ..'.TPTY..p.SYNA
 27B00: 32 42 36 31 00 5F 48 49 44 70 0A 2C 42 41 44 52  2B61._HIDp.,BADR

Apparently this problem can be solved by recompiling the kernel with this id code included in the elan_i2c_core.c file, but I don't want to mess with the kernel!

Is there any other way I can solve this problem?
If not, I would appreciate some help in filing a bug report.

Best Answer

So, eventually I managed to get the touchpad working on Ubuntu 18.04, kernel version: 5.3.0-46-generic thanks to comments on this link: https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxquestions/comments/f9h0q4/touchpad_issue_lenovo_s14515iil/

Basically what needs to be done is:

Open the file /etc/default/grub for editing, for example by running
```
sudoedit /etc/default/grub
```
Add to the line beginning GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT: "i8042.nopnp=1 pci=nocrs" so that it reads:
```
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="i8042.nopnp=1 pci=nocrs"
```
If other parameters are there between the double quotes, it may be OK to leave them.
Save the file and exit
Run this command to update the GRUB configuration:
```
sudo update-grub
```
Reboot

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – How to config Trackpoint + Synaptics touchpad only enable clicks on Linux (Ubuntu)

Well, this is not the direct answer, but a suggestion and examples. If you run xinput, you will get list of your devices. Then run xinput list-props $id where $id is your touchpad id in the list.

You will have a list of options like this:

$ xinput list-props 13
Device 'SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad':
    Device Enabled (135):   1
    Coordinate Transformation Matrix (137): 1.000000, 0.000000, 0.000000, 0.000000, 1.000000, 0.000000, 0.000000, 0.000000, 1.000000
    Device Accel Profile (268): 1
    Device Accel Constant Deceleration (269):   2.500000
    Device Accel Adaptive Deceleration (270):   1.000000
    Device Accel Velocity Scaling (271):    12.500000
    Synaptics Edges (292):  1765, 5371, 1637, 4453
    Synaptics Finger (293): 25, 30, 0
    Synaptics Tap Time (294):   180
    Synaptics Tap Move (295):   234
    Synaptics Tap Durations (296):  180, 180, 100
    Synaptics ClickPad (297):   1
    [...]

You can change all of these on-the-fly with xinput set-prop $id $propId $value where $id is the device id, $propId is property id in brackets and $value is what you want it to be. For example:

xinput set-prop 13 135 0 sets Device Enabled (135) to 0 and this will disable the touchpad.

You will need descriptions of properties and a way to make your changes permanent. Descriptions can be found in man synaptics, but wait, they are in another cryptic format! Let's see why.

To make changes permanent, you need to create conf file in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d, for example 30-tochpad.conf with contents like these:

    Section "InputClass"  # you can read more in `man xorg`
            Identifier "all touchpads"  # just a name for this config
            MatchIsTouchpad "on"  # enables this config for all detected touchpads
            Driver "synaptics"  # enables synaptics-specific options below

            # This will disable the device
            #Option "Ignore" "1"

            # There are options that are generic for input-devices or mouse-like devices, see `man evdev`:
            Option "ButtonMapping" "0 0 0 0 0 0 0"  # i disabled all buttons here, for example

            # Here go options from `man synaptics`
            Option "VertTwoFingerScroll" "1"
            Option "HorizTwoFingerScroll" "1"
            Option "PalmDetect" "1"
            Option "ClickPad" "0"                
            # ...etc...
    EndSection

So, man synaptics describes options for xorg.conf and tells how they correspond to xinput list-props output.

PS. I tried to configure trackpoint on my ThinkPad X220 to have only two-fingers-scroll enabled, without clicks or mouse movement. I failed. Maybe you will manage to do what you want (there was an option to disable everything but clicks, maybe Synaptics Off).

Sources, more examples and unicorns:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/X/Config/Input

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Touchpad_Synaptics

Ubuntu – Keys don’t repeat anymore, touchpad tap and touchpad two-finger scroll don’t work anymore

I had symptoms similar to yours regarding keys but not touchpad.

The solution I found was from Fixing Keyboard repeat problems in Kernel 4.13. Check it out to find a more comprehensive guide and explanations.

Writing showkeys in a terminal showed that keycode 213 was being pressed and unpressed about once every second, explaining why keys held were being interrupted.

This is caused by the PEAQ WMI hotkeys module, that I see you have running too.

So to fix the keyboard

I typed in a terminal

sudo rmmod peaq_wmi

and verified that this fixed my problem temporarily. To keep the setting after the computer is restarted, I typed

gedit /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf

and added the following to the file

#spams ^@
blacklist peaq_wmi

(Note: I do not know if this module was important to the functioning of my computer in any way. I will personally make a note that if something on my pc doesn't work I can try to re-enable it. I'll also check in a month or two to see if I can re-enable it because an update has fixed the issue.)

To fix the touchpad

according to the post you can try similarly

sudo rmmod psmouse
sudo modprobe psmouse

and if this fixes the problem until next time you restard, you can do

gedit /etc/rc.local

and add these lines

/sbin/rmmod psmouse
/sbin/modprobe psmouse