[gentoo-user] synaptic touchpad stopped scrolling!

[Iain Buchanan <iaindb@netspace.net.au>]

Hi,

I can't live without my touchpad extentions (scrolling, tap to click, 
etc).  All provided somehow by the synaptics driver, but I've never 
really looked into how.

Recently I noticed it stopped working but I don't know what I've changed 
as I've been docked for so long with a usb mouse.

I've had the same section layout for aaaages:
Section "InputDevice"
     Identifier     "Synaptic Touchpad"
     Driver         "synaptics"
     Option         "Device" "/dev/input/mouse0"
     Option         "SendCoreEvents" "true"
     Option         "Protocol" "auto-dev"
EndSection

The xorg.0.log error is:
SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad can't grab event device, errno=16

I tried first changing
  Option "GrabEventDevice" "false"
but that didn't work.  I noticed this:
  (II) config/hal: Adding input device SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad
so I thought maybe hal is grabbing the touchpad and interfering somehow. 
  I tried to turn off hal in my serverlayout section:
  Option         "AutoAddDevices" "false"
but that doesn't help either.  Now there's hardly any synaptic messages 
in xorg.0.log, no errors, and I still can't scroll.

I'm sure theres some simple USE flag or option that I need to use but I 
can't find it!  More to the point I would like to understand why it 
worked for so long but doesn't now (I've been using a similar xorg.conf 
file for... a long time!).

any suggestions?

thanks,
-- 
Iain Buchanan <iaindb at netspace dot net dot au>

It is up to us to produce better-quality movies.
	-- Lloyd Kaufman, producer of "Stuff Stephanie in the Incinerator"