[gentoo-user] Trackpad nightmare: Elantech ETPS/2

[gentoo-user] Trackpad nightmare: Elantech ETPS/2

[Victor Ivanov]

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Dear fellow Gentoo users,

Despite being a largely silent gentoo-user subscribers, I am always
fascinated by the helpful and in-depth discussions that pop up every so
often on this mailing list.

I hope somebody can help me resolve this frustrating situation or at
least help be debug it in a meaningful way that can help a bug report.

My laptop's trackpad is an ETPS/2 Elantech on a ThinkPad Yoga 260 (ca.
2016). Every so often it freezes and refuses to respond to any and all
input. The freeze usually lasts for a second or so, but can sometimes be
longer in the range of 10-15 seconds or even freeze indefinitely until
the "psmouse" kernel module is reloaded. It also experiences "jumping"
behaviour, most commonly encountered when press-holding one of the
companion buttons along with a dragging gesture, but that's not an
exclusive scenario.

When a freeze occurs, my dmesg is usually plagued messages as seen in
the attachment provided (excerpt) while Xorg.0.log often shows error
messages as in the attachment (excerpt). Apart from these messages, both
dmesg and Xorg logs look otherwise healthy.

A quick Google search can reveal complaints about this issues across
distributions (Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian) that can be traced back to at
least 2012 in various laptop models. There also appears to be a related
upstream kernel bug [1] that has been left in limbo.

Ever since I got this laptop I have been having this issue every so
often but usually only with the odd hiccup and rarely impeding in any
way. Lately, however this has been a nightmare. Given that this is my
daily driver for work and research and this issue is getting out of
hand. The worst part is that the internal keyboard is on the same serial
bus and a freeze in the touchpad driver often causes a freeze of the
keyboard where keyboard events get queued up and eventually interpreted
rapidly all at once, should the touchpad recover. If not, the system
appears to have frozen (even though it's not and can be controlled with
USB peripherals).

I run a Plasma desktop on a 17.1 profile with libinput. I have _not_
been able to identify any recent package updates that may have led to
the increase in frequency. The issue is present on both kernel 5.4.28
(stable) as well as 5.6.10 (~amd64).

For close to 15y on Gentoo, I have not once encountered an issue that I
have been unable to debug and solve :( Though admittedly, this may well
not be a Gentoo-specific issue.

To keep this email short(ish), I haven't provided too much detail, but
am happy to dig further. Any input, especially if someone has
encountered this themselves, would be greatly appreciated!

[1] https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=48161

Cheers,
Victor

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[Tue May  5 10:03:52 2020] psmouse serio1: Touchpad at isa0060/serio1/input0 lost sync at byte 6
[Tue May  5 10:03:52 2020] psmouse serio1: Touchpad at isa0060/serio1/input0 lost sync at byte 6
[Tue May  5 10:03:52 2020] psmouse serio1: Touchpad at isa0060/serio1/input0 lost sync at byte 6
[Tue May  5 10:03:52 2020] psmouse serio1: Touchpad at isa0060/serio1/input0 - driver resynced.
[Tue May  5 10:03:52 2020] psmouse serio1: Touchpad at isa0060/serio1/input0 lost sync at byte 6
[Tue May  5 10:03:52 2020] psmouse serio1: Touchpad at isa0060/serio1/input0 lost sync at byte 6
[Tue May  5 10:03:52 2020] psmouse serio1: Touchpad at isa0060/serio1/input0 lost sync at byte 6
[Tue May  5 10:03:52 2020] psmouse serio1: Touchpad at isa0060/serio1/input0 lost sync at byte 6
[Tue May  5 10:03:52 2020] psmouse serio1: Touchpad at isa0060/serio1/input0 lost sync at byte 6
[Tue May  5 10:03:52 2020] psmouse serio1: issuing reconnect request
[Tue May  5 10:05:28 2020] psmouse serio1: Touchpad at isa0060/serio1/input0 lost sync at byte 6
[Tue May  5 10:05:28 2020] psmouse serio1: Touchpad at isa0060/serio1/input0 - driver resynced.
[Tue May  5 10:05:28 2020] psmouse serio1: Touchpad at isa0060/serio1/input0 lost sync at byte 6
[Tue May  5 10:05:28 2020] psmouse serio1: Touchpad at isa0060/serio1/input0 - driver resynced.
[Tue May  5 10:05:29 2020] psmouse serio1: Touchpad at isa0060/serio1/input0 lost sync at byte 6
[Tue May  5 10:05:29 2020] psmouse serio1: Touchpad at isa0060/serio1/input0 lost sync at byte 6
[Tue May  5 10:05:29 2020] psmouse serio1: Touchpad at isa0060/serio1/input0 lost sync at byte 6
[Tue May  5 10:05:30 2020] psmouse serio1: Touchpad at isa0060/serio1/input0 lost synchronization, throwing 5 bytes away.
[Tue May  5 10:05:31 2020] psmouse serio1: resync failed, issuing reconnect request
[Tue May  5 10:28:17 2020] psmouse serio1: Touchpad at isa0060/serio1/input0 lost sync at byte 6
[Tue May  5 10:28:17 2020] psmouse serio1: Touchpad at isa0060/serio1/input0 lost sync at byte 6
[Tue May  5 10:28:17 2020] psmouse serio1: Touchpad at isa0060/serio1/input0 lost sync at byte 6
[Tue May  5 10:28:17 2020] psmouse serio1: Touchpad at isa0060/serio1/input0 lost sync at byte 6
[Tue May  5 10:28:17 2020] psmouse serio1: Touchpad at isa0060/serio1/input0 lost sync at byte 6
[Tue May  5 10:28:17 2020] psmouse serio1: issuing reconnect request
[Tue May  5 10:45:40 2020] perf: interrupt took too long (2544 > 2500), lowering kernel.perf_event_max_sample_rate to 78500
[Tue May  5 10:55:23 2020] perf: interrupt took too long (3185 > 3180), lowering kernel.perf_event_max_sample_rate to 62750
[Tue May  5 11:07:48 2020] perf: interrupt took too long (4051 > 3981), lowering kernel.perf_event_max_sample_rate to 49250

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[   219.131] (EE) event18 - ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad: kernel bug: Touch jump detected and discarded. See https://wayland.freedesktop.org/libinput/doc/1.15.4/touchpad-jumping-cursors.html for details
[   642.582] (EE) event18 - ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad: kernel bug: Touch jump detected and discarded. See https://wayland.freedesktop.org/libinput/doc/1.15.4/touchpad-jumping-cursors.html for details
[  1892.782] [dix] EventToCore: Not implemented yet
[  1914.965] (EE) event18 - ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad: kernel bug: Touch jump detected and discarded. See https://wayland.freedesktop.org/libinput/doc/1.15.4/touchpad-jumping-cursors.html for details

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Re: [gentoo-user] Trackpad nightmare: Elantech ETPS/2

[inasprecali]

On Tue, 5 May 2020 14:58:32 +0100
Victor Ivanov <vic.m.ivanov@gmail.com> wrote:
> My laptop's trackpad is an ETPS/2 Elantech on a ThinkPad Yoga
> 260 (ca. 2016). Every so often it freezes and refuses to respond
> to any and all input. The freeze usually lasts for a second or
> so, but can sometimes be longer in the range of 10-15 seconds or
> even freeze indefinitely until the "psmouse" kernel module is
> reloaded. It also experiences "jumping" behaviour, most commonly
> encountered when press-holding one of the companion buttons
> along with a dragging gesture, but that's not an exclusive
> scenario.

I experience very similar symptoms on my ThinkPad 13. It doesn't
happen often, but it does sometimes happen.

> A quick Google search can reveal complaints about this issues
> across distributions (Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian) that can be traced
> back to at least 2012 in various laptop models. There also
> appears to be a related upstream kernel bug [1] that has been
> left in limbo.

I noticed this as well, it's almost certainly a bug in Linux
itself which, for some reason, has never been fixed after all
these years.  I don't think Gentoo can do much about it.

Unfortunately I'm not aware of any real solution, but as a
workaround, you can unmount and re-mount the psmouse module when
the problem occurs (if psmouse is not built compiled as a module,
I suggest you do it).  At least this is what works for me, YMMV:

# modprobe -r psmouse
# modprobe psmouse

Re: [gentoo-user] Trackpad nightmare: Elantech ETPS/2

[Michael]

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On Tuesday, 5 May 2020 15:28:15 BST inasprecali wrote:
> On Tue, 5 May 2020 14:58:32 +0100
> 
> Victor Ivanov <vic.m.ivanov@gmail.com> wrote:
> > My laptop's trackpad is an ETPS/2 Elantech on a ThinkPad Yoga
> > 260 (ca. 2016). Every so often it freezes and refuses to respond
> > to any and all input. The freeze usually lasts for a second or
> > so, but can sometimes be longer in the range of 10-15 seconds or
> > even freeze indefinitely until the "psmouse" kernel module is
> > reloaded. It also experiences "jumping" behaviour, most commonly
> > encountered when press-holding one of the companion buttons
> > along with a dragging gesture, but that's not an exclusive
> > scenario.
> 
> I experience very similar symptoms on my ThinkPad 13. It doesn't
> happen often, but it does sometimes happen.
> 
> > A quick Google search can reveal complaints about this issues
> > across distributions (Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian) that can be traced
> > back to at least 2012 in various laptop models. There also
> > appears to be a related upstream kernel bug [1] that has been
> > left in limbo.
> 
> I noticed this as well, it's almost certainly a bug in Linux
> itself which, for some reason, has never been fixed after all
> these years.  I don't think Gentoo can do much about it.
> 
> Unfortunately I'm not aware of any real solution, but as a
> workaround, you can unmount and re-mount the psmouse module when
> the problem occurs (if psmouse is not built compiled as a module,
> I suggest you do it).  At least this is what works for me, YMMV:
> 
> # modprobe -r psmouse
> # modprobe psmouse

I'm on an old Lenovo which must have different hardware/firmware.  It does not 
suffer from such trackpad problems.  Just an idea: have you migrated your 
system to libinput driver and removed all old synaptics syntax in /etc/X11/
xorg.conf.d/ to avoid potential clashes?

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Re: [gentoo-user] Trackpad nightmare: Elantech ETPS/2

[Victor Ivanov]

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On 05/05/2020 15:28, inasprecali wrote:
> 
> I experience very similar symptoms on my ThinkPad 13. It doesn't
> happen often, but it does sometimes happen.
> 
It's good to hear that there are others sharing the pain - at least to a
degree - today, as most topics I've come across stop around 2018, which
made me believe the issue had been resolved in the kernel.

> 
> Unfortunately I'm not aware of any real solution, but as a
> workaround, you can unmount and re-mount the psmouse module when
> the problem occurs (if psmouse is not built compiled as a module,
> I suggest you do it).  At least this is what works for me, YMMV:
> 
> # modprobe -r psmouse
> # modprobe psmouse
> 
This is basically what I've been doing. However, it's not as easy when
it causes the keyboard to freeze as well, where the only solution is
usually a hard reset without access to an external keyboard. It's also
incredibly time consuming to do a few times an hour, even without having
to reboot.

I might bump up the bug report on kernel.org and see if gets any attention.


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Re: [gentoo-user] Trackpad nightmare: Elantech ETPS/2

[Victor Ivanov]

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On 05/05/2020 18:44, Michael wrote:
> 
> I'm on an old Lenovo which must have different hardware/firmware.  It does not 
> suffer from such trackpad problems.  Just an idea: have you migrated your 
> system to libinput driver and removed all old synaptics syntax in /etc/X11/
> xorg.conf.d/ to avoid potential clashes?
> 
Yes, as I mentioned in my original email I use libinput and have done so
ever since it became a reasonable replacement. Certainly so for at least
the last three to four years.

I don't believe it's a library issue as the error messages in dmesg -
which are far more disturbing than those in Xorg.log - come directly
from the psmouse module.

It would appear ELAN trackpad drivers are generally in a very sorry
state across the board. In my very rare and limited use of Windows I
remember having a similarly abominable experience, albeit due to other
symptoms. With Synaptics trackpads, although not perfect, I have yet to
experience anything as hellish as this.


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