Ubuntu – How to configure glidepoint driver for touchpad

alpsdelldriverstouchpad

After using the hack described in :
Alps Touchpad on Dell: how do I install the DKMS driver to enable multitouch?,
I'm able to get somewhat functional touchpad for a laptop Dell Latititude E6430 using the glidepoint driver.

However, the two finger scroll is somewhat fizzy and definitely not as smooth as in Windows 7. I would be willing to have a try at fine tuning the configuration files (speed of two finger scroll, pressure, that kind of things) to see if I can make it better, but I can't figure out where they are.

The xinput list relevant output is :

⎡ Virtual core pointer                      id=2    [master pointer  (3)]

⎜   ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer            id=4    [slave  pointer  (2)]

⎜   ↳ GlidePoint Virtual Touchpad           id=13   [slave  pointer  (2)]

⎣ Virtual core keyboard                     id=3    [master keyboard (2)]

and the synclient -l output is :

Couldn't find synaptics properties. No synaptics driver loaded?

The synclient package xserver-xorg-input-synaptics 1.6.2-1ubuntu6 is installed, but apparently doesn't figure out that the glidepoint driver is somewhat of a synaptik-like touchpad that one could whish to configure in a similar way.

The Glidepoint package I installed from the previously mentionned link does have a reasonnably nice GUI config tool, but the only available option for two finger scroll is activate or doesn't activate.

Likewise, the mouse and touchpad system configuration options doesn't give me any tuning related to a touchpad, let alone a multipoint touchpad.

Does someone know how to fine tune the glidepoint driver ?

There is a /etc/glidepoint/configure file which looks like :

target_scancode = 0x4, 0x4, 0x9e    ;event_type, event_code, event_value

ref_scancode = 0x1, 0xbf            ;event_type, event_code

target_scancode_times = 1           ;support 0, 1 or 2

but nothing really obvious here.

I did also locate a ~/.gconf/apps/glidepoint/preferences/ALPS_T3_Touchpa/%gconf.xml file which has an entry :

entry name="TwoFinger" mtime="1365632937" type="int" value="1"/

which looks like it is storing the enabling status of the two finger scrolling configuration but no fine tuning here as far as I can tell.

Note that I'm using Ubuntu 13.04 with standard unity, although I don't see why a non beta distribution would make a difference here (the same happens with Ubuntu 12.04)

Thank you for your answer!

Best Answer

I had the same problem on my Latitude 6430u (pre-installed with Ubuntu 12.04) : although the touchpad completely worked (I could even "pinch to zoom") I couldn't configure it.

somewhat solved it by installing a fixed ALPS driver :

donwloaded the driver from http://www.dahetral.com/public-download
extracted the tarball with tar xvjf psmouse-alps-1.3-alt.tbz and copied all sources to /usr/src with sudo cp -Rvup usr /
/usr/src/psmouse-alps-1.3/alps.sh dkms_build_alps
I also had to uninstall the debian package "glidepoint"

After rebooting the "touchpad" tab is back in system settings and allows me to configure a perfect two-fingers scrolling. Looks like I lost the pinch-to-zoom but I don't need it...

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Ubuntu – Help trying to get two-finger scrolling to work on Asus UL80VT

To get your synclient settings to stick you can add them to xorg.conf. I did this recently for my macbook pro in 12.10 and it works pretty well.

You can also specify a separate configuration file in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/ file to keep things neater. Here's a step by step:

Create /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d (if it doesn't already exist)

sudo mkdir /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d
Create and edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-synaptics.conf

gksudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-synaptics.conf

Make it look like the following:

#Sample /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-synaptics.conf
Section "InputClass"
  Identifier "touchpad catchall"
  Driver "synaptics"
  MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*"
  MatchIsTouchpad "true"
  Option  "SHMConfig"           "true"
  Option  "TapButton1"          "1"
  Option  "TapButton2"          "2"
  Option  "TapButton3"          "3"
EndSection

Save and logout/login again. If the xserver fails to load and you get forced into low graphics mode then edit the file again and comment everything out, or mv /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-synaptics.conf ~/10-synaptics.conf.backup and reload again to get back to normal.

For posterity, my current setup for my macbook pro 2012 13" is as follows (warning, I like my touchpad rather sensitive). Try any of these options using synclient before putting them into xorg.conf!

Section "InputClass"
      Identifier "touchpad catchall"
      Driver "synaptics"
      MatchIsTouchpad "on"
      MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*"
      MatchProduct "bcm5974"
      MatchIsTouchpad "true"
      Option  "SHMConfig"           "true"
      Option  "FastTaps"            "1"
      Option  "MaxDoubleTapTime"    "100"
      Option  "BottomEdge"          "6000"
      Option  "FingerLow"           "60"
      Option  "FingerHigh"          "90"
      Option         "ClickFinger3" "2"
#      Option         "FingerLow"             "30"
#      Option         "FingerHigh"            "80"
      Option         "VertTwoFingerScroll" "1"
      Option         "HorizTwoFingerScroll" "1"
      Option         "VertScrollDelta" "100"
      Option         "HorizScrollDelta" "100"
      Option         "MultiFingerButton" "2"
      #Option         "TapButton1" "1"
      Option         "TapButton2" "3"
      Option         "TapButton3" "2"
      Option         "MinSpeed" "1"
      Option         "MaxSpeed" "2"
      Option         "AccelFactor" "0.01"
#      Option         "AreaBottomEdge" "5000"
EndSection

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

Best Answer

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Ubuntu – Help trying to get two-finger scrolling to work on Asus UL80VT

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