[gentoo-amd64] Re: Xorg upgrade and synaptics driver

[Duncan]

Mansour Al Akeel <mansour.alakeel@×××××.com> posted
20090413224623.GA20566@××××.lan, excerpted below, on  Mon, 13 Apr 2009
19:46:24 -0300:

> Dieter:
> Thank you, that did the trick.

> On Mon Apr 13,2009 06:54 pm, Dieter Ries wrote:
>> Mansour Al Akeel schrieb:
>>
>> > today I did "emerge --update --newuse --deep world" in order to get
>> > the latest. However, I had to fight a bit to get x11 working, but
>> > after many attempts the mouse pad scrolling is still not working.
>>
>> I had the very same experience today [and] here's what I noticed:
>>
>> First I thought my evdev driven usb mouse section had stolen my
>> touchpad. But there were no hints to that in Xorg.0.log and removing
>> mouse0 from xorg.conf didnt change anything.
>>
>> Then I used
>>
>> synclient -l
>>
>> to see the settings of synaptics.

To possibly resolve that last loose end and put this to bed...

Mansour, note that you were using syndaemon, where here he used synclient.

What might have been happening, why it couldn't access the shared memory, 
may have been that another "syndaemon" (either CLI mouse/gpm driver or 
xorg driver) was already running, occupying the shared memory, keeping 
your manually run daemon from accessing it too.  Now that I see him using 
the client and thinking about client/server communication, that sounds 
likely.

Years ago I ran a syntouch, tho it was back in the old proprietary world 
before MS "strongly encouraged" me to defect, but that was one of my 
favorite pointing devices.  Unfortunately, it was on a corded generic 
"ergonomic/wave" keyboard and I've run cordless Logitech "wave" keyboards 
for years now, settling on the decent but separate Cordless Trackman 
Marble (the right-handed one with the ball under the thumb).  But I've 
always wondered why the couldn't integrate a SynTouch into the keyboard 
and be done with it.  At first I thought maybe they used too much power, 
but that can't be it as they're common laptop devices.  Probably just NIH 
and/or the royalties Logitech would have to pay Syntouch are too high.  
But I'd still pay good money for a nice cordless wave keyboard with an 
integrated syntouch.

Anyway, while I don't have one now and thus wasn't as much help as I'd 
have liked, I do like them and have run them before, so I could 
understand and sympathize with your problem.  But I'd never heard of the 
two-finger "Mac way" of scrolling until Dieter's post.  Why on earth they 
made it the default, disabling the normal edge-scroll, I don't know.

But you got it working again, and that's a good thing! =:^)  

FWIW, as I do like touchpads, there's some chance I'll get another one in 
the future (and in fact I have a touchpad on my netbook, tho I'm not sure 
it's a syntouch and I'm not using it much right now as I'm trying to make 
room on my main machine to run a 32-bit chroot to install a Gentoo image 
too, then transfer it to the netbook).  And as such, there's a fair 
chance I'll end up using this info myself at some point.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman