[ltp] R61 touchpad not recognized in Ubuntu

[Christian Birchinger]

On Mon, Nov 26, 2007 at 06:51:23PM +0100, Ugo Riboni wrote:
> I have a pretty new thinkpad R61 which i'm trying to setup correctly
> in ubuntu (gutsy).
> 
> I've got pretty much everything working, except some things. One of
> these is the touchpad.
> 
> Ubuntu recognizes it, but just as a generic PS2 mouse. So i can use it
> to move around the screen just fine, but for everything else it's
> totally useless.

You probably own a R61 with an ALPS UltraNAV. 
                                              
If that's the case you should check out:

http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=8864#21

This contains patches for the kernel to detect the pad, and you
can use synaptics Xorg driver. The driver supports ALPS pads
too, but needs different parameters.

You'll see this in the /proc/bus/input/devices:
N: Name="DualPoint Stick"
N: Name="AlpsPS/2 ALPS DualPoint TouchPad"

However there are currently regressions. The trackpointer is
not driven by the real trackpointer driver. So the cool tweaking
options described here at the following URL doesn't work:

http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Patch_to_enable_advanced_trackpoint_configuration

We first got the impression this is a limitation of the ALPS
hardware but later found out, that when you disable the pad
in the BIOS, the trackpointer driver picks up the trackpointer
and supports all features described in the Wiki.

At this point it shows up in /proc/bus/input/devices as:
N: Name="TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint"

Anyway, if you just want to use the cool features of the pad
the patch from the bugzilla URL will do the job. The
trackpointer is also functional like in PS/2 emu mode.

Christian

Direct patch URL:
http://bugzilla.kernel.org/attachment.cgi?id=13068&action=view