Distro without symantics mouse problem?

[Alaric]

Alright, here's the common problem that I've been facing. My synaptics 0121 mouse and keyboard both like to randomly spaz out while I'm using linux on my v5305wm compaq laptop under kubuntu 7.10. I guess it has something to do with the battery power, keyboard input, and mouse input all being checked at once. The mouse bounces all over the screen and the laptop keys "stick" into place as if I was holding them down until I press the key again. This occurs to the point of unusabillity until I restart. A lot of people have been posting about this problem around the internet, and most of them have remedied their problem by adding i8042.nomux=1 (or something like that) into their kernel boot options it /boot/grub/menu.lst. However, for me and one other poster I've found online, this "solution" replaces the spastic mouse and keyboard problem with a *dead* mouse and keyboard problem. My keys and mouse no longer register *at all* (power button excluded). Which logs should I post? Has anyone heard of an alternate solution?

[oz]

I've read lots of complaints from others regarding this issue, and there seems to be no definite fix for it. A few users reported some relief when they installed an older or newer version of synaptics than what they were currently using.

If I should run across anything more that might help, I'll post back.

[bigvoo]

yep, not a linux problem. my brand new notebook, running weendos vista ( for now ) does this too, and it grates on me, it really does seem, sometimes like someone is remotely doing it, because when im trying to work on somting it just goes bonkers, scrolling up and down constantly, but I guess it's just a hardware problem.

[Alaric]

Does anyone know a distribution (preferably debian based) that is not susceptible to this problem? I've been using kubuntu and loving every minute of it (except this) for about 6 months. I'd really like to keep using linux like I have been for the past couple of years, but this bug is making my laptop too annoying to use without a restart after about an hour or so. Any ideas? Many thanks guys.

[Chris H]

Does anyone know a distribution (preferably debian based) that is not susceptible to this problem? I've been using kubuntu and loving every minute of it (except this) for about 6 months. I'd really like to keep using linux like I have been for the past couple of years, but this bug is making my laptop too annoying to use without a restart after about an hour or so. Any ideas? Many thanks guys.

This issue had driven me nuts until I found the i8042 solution. For my laptop the least susceptible distros to this problem were openSuse and Linspire.

[Alaric]

I just reinstalled with gutsy under gnome instead of kde, and the symptoms seem to have decreased by an order of magnitude. I recommend anyone with this problem that can't use the i8042 fix try installing 7.10 gnome. I'm still hoping to fix the problem altogether, because the mouse still messes up every once in a while, but from my experience it's a lot less than at least kubuntu. Also, linspire is proprietary (at least for cnr) and for some reason, (possibly a bad install disc burn) opensuse failed to install for me. Thanks for the reply though, it got me interested in finding a solution again.

[Chris H]

You could try freespire, same as Linspire but without a few proprietary components. You don't have to use cnr with freespire, just the usual apt-get should work.

Any info from your syslog when the problem happens?

[Alaric]

Hmm... Maybe I'll have to try it out. The effects on ubuntu seem to come and go. At times, it's as bad as kubuntu, but others it runs fine. Not sure what's going on.

Yeah dmesg is spammed by psmouse.

[  572.728000] psmouse.c: TouchPad at isa0060/serio4/input0 lost sync at byte 4
[  572.728000] psmouse.c: TouchPad at isa0060/serio4/input0 lost sync at byte 1
[  572.740000] psmouse.c: TouchPad at isa0060/serio4/input0 - driver resynched.
[  572.752000] psmouse.c: TouchPad at isa0060/serio4/input0 lost sync at byte 4
[  572.756000] psmouse.c: TouchPad at isa0060/serio4/input0 lost sync at byte 1
[  572.764000] psmouse.c: TouchPad at isa0060/serio4/input0 - driver resynched.
[  572.784000] psmouse.c: TouchPad at isa0060/serio4/input0 lost sync at byte 1
[  572.788000] psmouse.c: TouchPad at isa0060/serio4/input0 lost sync at byte 1
[  572.792000] psmouse.c: TouchPad at isa0060/serio4/input0 lost sync at byte 4
[  572.796000] psmouse.c: TouchPad at isa0060/serio4/input0 lost sync at byte 1
[  572.796000] psmouse.c: TouchPad at isa0060/serio4/input0 lost sync at byte 1
[  572.796000] psmouse.c: issuing reconnect request

Googling 'psmouse.c: TouchPad lost sync at byte 1' with no quotes returns 1,990 results, so it's fairly common. There's a popular quick fix for the error that involves adding i8042.nomux=1 to your kernel calling line, but it just so happens that that "fix" freezes my mouse and keyboard completely after being booted for about 10 minutes. So far, my only true method of "fixing" this bug is to disable the mouse and work completely with the keyboard :P.

[Chris H]

Just to confirm you added i8042.nomux=1 to the end of the kernel calling line and have rebooted?

Aside from that I've not seen much else that looks a likely solution.

What does your xorg.conf have in terms of keyboard and mouse devices?

[Alaric]

Yeah, I've tried rebooting on numerous occasions with i8042.nomux=1, and it always works fine until both my mouse and my keyboard die. My xorg.conf currently looks like this.

Section "InputDevice"
        Identifier  "Configured Mouse"
        Driver      "mouse"
        Option      "CorePointer"
        Option      "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
        Option      "Protocol" "ImPS/2"
        Option      "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
        Option      "Emulate3Buttons" "true"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
        Identifier  "Synaptics Touchpad"
        Driver      "synaptics"
        Option      "SendCoreEvents" "true"
        Option      "Device" "/dev/psaux"
        Option      "Protocol" "auto-dev"
        Option      "HorizEdgeScroll" "0"
EndSection

but I've tried disabling 3 button support, I've tried getting a configuration utillity for synaptics touchpads, and I've tried completely removing anything related to synaptic touchpads from my xorg.conf and replacing it with generic settings.

For what it's worth I'm running a v5305wm compaq laptop with an extra gig of ram.

Here's an lspci so you don't have to look up too much on my laptop

00:00.0 Host bridge: ATI Technologies Inc RS480 Host Bridge (rev 01)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc RS480 PCI Bridge
00:05.0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc RS480 PCI Bridge
00:13.0 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 USB Host Controller
00:13.1 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 USB Host Controller
00:13.2 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 USB2 Host Controller
00:14.0 SMBus: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 SMBus Controller (rev 11)
00:14.1 IDE interface: ATI Technologies Inc Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller
00:14.3 ISA bridge: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 PCI-ISA Bridge
00:14.4 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 PCI-PCI Bridge
00:14.5 Multimedia audio controller: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 02)
00:14.6 Modem: ATI Technologies Inc SB400 AC'97 Modem Controller (rev 02)
00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] HyperTransport Technology Configuration
00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Address Map
00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] DRAM Controller
00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Miscellaneous Control
01:05.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Radeon XPRESS 200M 5955 (PCIE)
06:02.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4318 [AirForce One 54g] 802.11g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 02)
06:06.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+ (rev 10)

The only other thing that I can think to try is add that kernel parameter again, and see if it works with a (fairly) clean install. I doubt it will work, but I'll try it once I get home from school (Freaking finals day).