I'm having problems configuring my touchpad???

[southpaw]

Hello again siblings of the open source world ,
My question today is in regards to the Alp's touchpad on my laptop. Being a Gentoo user, I have made several attempts to take full advantage of my touchpads capabilities by emerging the "synaptics" touchpad driver, which has been made available through portage. I have tried following many of the "tutorials" and "how-to's" made available online, only to be repeatedly met with failure. Here are the two tutorials which I have been using;

http://gentoo-wiki.com/HARDWARE_Synaptics_Touchpad

...and this one,

http://quadrant1.ath.cx/ALPS-touchpad-kernel-2.6.html

After following the instruction given I run into the same error upon restarting the X-Server:

Parse error on line 226 of section Input Device in file /etc/X11/xorg.conf "Identifier" is not a valid keyword in this section.

No screens found.

For anyone who may be able to help me, yes I have compiled "evdev" and "ps2mouse" as modules in the kernel. The kernel I am using is "sys-kernel/gentoo-sources-2.6.13-r5". Help ...

[smolloy]

Can you post the contents of xorg.conf. It sounds like it might not be properly configured.

[southpaw]

Here they are:

# **********************************************************************
# Core Pointer's InputDevice section
# **********************************************************************

Section "InputDevice"

# Identifier and driver

    Identifier  "Mouse1"
    Driver "mouse"
    Option "Protocol"   "GlidePointPS/2"
    Option "Device"     "/dev/input/mice"



    InputDevice "Mouse1" "CorePointer"
    InputDevice "Keyboard1" "CoreKeyboard"

EndSection

...this is my standard setup when automatically generated by "fglrxconfig".

[southpaw]

Ahh-Hahh!!
Alas, I've finally stumbled into the solution !

Okay here goes, apparently when I added the lines in "/etc/X11/xorg.conf", as per instructed in the "gentoo-wiki" tutorial, they forgot to mention a critical piece of information. This also goes for all the other tutorials that I read on these and other forums. In the "Core Pointer's InputDevice section" of my "xorg.conf", I made the mistake of adding the synaptics data without ommiting any of the old data, which looked like this:

 
# **********************************************************************
# Core Pointer's InputDevice section
# **********************************************************************

Section "InputDevice"
  Driver "synaptics"
  Identifier "TouchPad"
  Option "Device" "/dev/input/mouse0"
  Option "Protocol" "auto-dev"
  Option "LeftEdge" "130"
  Option "RightEdge" "840"
  Option "TopEdge" "130"
  Option "BottomEdge" "640"
  Option "FingerLow" "7"
  Option "FingerHigh" "8"
  Option "MaxTapTime" "180"
  Option "MaxTapMove" "110"
  Option "EmulateMidButtonTime" "75"
  Option "VertScrollDelta" "20"
  Option "HorizScrollDelta" "20"
  Option "MinSpeed" "0.60"
  Option "MaxSpeed" "1.10"
  Option "AccelFactor" "0.030"
  Option "EdgeMotionMinSpeed" "200"
  Option "EdgeMotionMaxSpeed" "200"
  Option "UpDownScrolling" "1"
  Option "CircularScrolling" "1"
  Option "CircScrollDelta" "0.1" Option "CircScrollTrigger" "2"
  Option "SHMConfig" "on"
  Option "Emulate3Buttons" "on"
EndSection

# Identifier and driver

    Identifier "Mouse1"
    Driver "mouse"
    Option "Protocol"   "GlidePointPS/2"
    Option "Device"     "/dev/input/mice"

# When using XQUEUE, comment out the above two lines, and uncomment
# the following line.

#    Option "Protocol"   "Xqueue"

# Baudrate and SampleRate are only for some Logitech mice. In
# almost every case these lines should be omitted.

#    Option "BaudRate"   "9600"
#    Option "SampleRate" "150"

# Emulate3Buttons is an option for 2-button Microsoft mice
# Emulate3Timeout is the timeout in milliseconds (default is 50ms)

    Option "Emulate3Buttons"
#    Option "Emulate3Timeout"    "50"

# ChordMiddle is an option for some 3-button Logitech mice

#    Option "ChordMiddle"

#EndSection

...Afterwards, I modified this section so that the Xserver would only be looking for one pointer, as obviuos as that may sound now not only did I not pick up on this, but nobody pointed it out to me either. So now this section looks like this:

# **********************************************************************
# Core Pointer's InputDevice section
# **********************************************************************

Section "InputDevice"
  Driver "synaptics"
  Identifier "TouchPad"
  Option "Device" "/dev/input/mouse0"
  Option "Protocol" "auto-dev"
  Option "LeftEdge" "130"
  Option "RightEdge" "840"
  Option "TopEdge" "130"
  Option "BottomEdge" "640"
  Option "FingerLow" "7"
  Option "FingerHigh" "8"
  Option "MaxTapTime" "180"
  Option "MaxTapMove" "110"
  Option "EmulateMidButtonTime" "75"
  Option "VertScrollDelta" "20"
  Option "HorizScrollDelta" "20"
  Option "MinSpeed" "0.60"
  Option "MaxSpeed" "1.10"
  Option "AccelFactor" "0.030"
  Option "EdgeMotionMinSpeed" "200"
  Option "EdgeMotionMaxSpeed" "200"
  Option "UpDownScrolling" "1"
  Option "CircularScrolling" "1"
  Option "CircScrollDelta" "0.1" Option "CircScrollTrigger" "2"
  Option "SHMConfig" "on"
  Option "Emulate3Buttons" "on"
EndSection

# Identifier and driver

#    Identifier "Mouse1"
#    Driver "mouse"
#    Option "Protocol"   "GlidePointPS/2"
#    Option "Device"     "/dev/input/mice"

# When using XQUEUE, comment out the above two lines, and uncomment
# the following line.

#    Option "Protocol"   "Xqueue"

# Baudrate and SampleRate are only for some Logitech mice. In
# almost every case these lines should be omitted.

#    Option "BaudRate"   "9600"
#    Option "SampleRate" "150"

# Emulate3Buttons is an option for 2-button Microsoft mice
# Emulate3Timeout is the timeout in milliseconds (default is 50ms)

#    Option "Emulate3Buttons"
#    Option "Emulate3Timeout"    "50"

# ChordMiddle is an option for some 3-button Logitech mice

#    Option "ChordMiddle"

#EndSection

...Now you would think that everything would be fine and dandy after this realization, not so. Upon reboot, I recieved one final error accompanied by the "pseudo-B.S.O.D." The error looked something like this:

Error in the Server Layout section of /etc/X11/xorg.conf, invalid identifier "Mouse1 CorePointer".

...Apparently, what the tutorial had instructed was incorrect, in other words they made file out to look like this:

Section "ServerLayout"

# The Identifier line must be present
    Identifier  "Server Layout"

# Each Screen line specifies a Screen section name, and optionally
# the relative position of other screens.  The four names after
# primary screen name are the screens to the top, bottom, left and right
# of the primary screen.

    Screen "Screen0"

# Each InputDevice line specifies an InputDevice section name and
# optionally some options to specify the way the device is to be
# used.  Those options include "CorePointer", "CoreKeyboard" and
# "SendCoreEvents".

    InputDevice "Mouse1" "CorePointer"
    InputDevice "Touchpad" "AlwaysCore"
    InputDevice "Keyboard1" "CoreKeyboard"

EndSection

....When in fact, all I needed to do was leave out the "Mouse1" line like this:

Section "ServerLayout"

# The Identifier line must be present
    Identifier  "Server Layout"

# Each Screen line specifies a Screen section name, and optionally
# the relative position of other screens.  The four names after
# primary screen name are the screens to the top, bottom, left and right
# of the primary screen.

    Screen "Screen0"

# Each InputDevice line specifies an InputDevice section name and
# optionally some options to specify the way the device is to be
# used.  Those options include "CorePointer", "CoreKeyboard" and
# "SendCoreEvents".

    InputDevice "Touchpad" "AlwaysCore"
    InputDevice "Keyboard1" "CoreKeyboard"

EndSection

...and Viola! Once again I have all the cool little extra features enabled to allow me to take full advantage of the touchpad's potential . So, for all you nOObs' out there, or anyone for that matter, who use a laptop with a touchpad, this is the way to go....