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touchpad on XPS 13 DE - 9333
I have two laptop computers XPS 13 DE : 9333 and 9350.
I am almost satisfied with the performance of the two devices. I was a bit deceived by the screen quality of the newest 9350, compared with the old 9333; I guess I would have been more satisfied if I could have got the High Resolution screen, not available in Italy.
I say almost satisfied, since I am always struggling with the Synaptics touch pad driver. on the 9333. The driver works great with Ubuntu trusty and kernel 3.13 ; with the latest 4.4.0 kernel IT IS SIMPLY NOT DETECTED at boot. I was guessing that the problem was related to the upgrade from 3.13 to 4.4.0, relying on the trusty meta-packages for xenial kernels.
So I decided to do a fresh install of Ubuntu xenial on a new partition. With xenial everything was OK, even if the name of SynPS2 name of the device ( xinput list ) was replaced by numerical codes. In spite of such "partial recognition" the driver was working flawlessly.
Three day ago I upgraded the kernel from 4.4.0-62 to 4.4.0-63 : the touch pad DOES NOT WORK AT ALL with the new kernel. It has simply disappeared from the output of th "xinput list" command. Today I upgraded to kernel 4.4.0-64 and the touch pad is STILL NOT WORKING.
I have thus decided to work with the latest kernel supporting the touchpad, namely 4.4.0-62.
I point out that the touch pad on the 9350 is WORKING FLAWLESSLY with Ubuntu trusty, upgraded to kernel 4.4.0-64, as it has always been doing with the older kernel versions. I am inclined to think that the new hardware enjoys a better support from Canonical ...
I have reported the bugs to Launchpad ( Bug#1629613) and I have seen that I am not the only one having problems with the Synaptics driver. Nevertheless the bug, filed on 2016-10-02 is STILL UNASSIGNED ; apparently this is not considered to be deserving a higher priority.
I could try to file a "kernel bug report", but I am not sure that the bug is in the Kernel, even if there is an apparent "regression" with the latest kernel versions.
Is it quite difficult for me to get a better understanding of the issue; I do not even know which hw devices are mounted on 9333 and 9350.
My opinion is that only DELL can somehow try find a a way for fixing the bug, together with Synaptics and Canonical development teams; I know that some activity has taken place on the Synaptics driver in 2016, but the support for XPS 13 DE 9333 seems to be broken with the new kernels.
Very best regards to everybody.
Alessandro Volpi
tossadin
2 Posts
2
February 27th, 2017 10:00
I had a very similar problem with my system. I was able to correct it by switching distros, or blacklisting the i2c_hid driver. Here is the original post that I discovered that allowed me to correct the issue in Ubuntu and Debian forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php
Here is the specific details that shows the steps to follow
1) In /etc/default/grub set GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="i8042.nopnp"
2) Run update-grub
3) Create file /etc/modprob.d/i2c_hid.conf containing: blacklist i2c_hid
4) Run depmod -ae
5) Run update initramfs -u
6) Add synaptics_i2c in a new line in /etc/modules
7) Reboot
relevant
161 Posts
0
February 28th, 2017 11:00
To the OP, since the kernel update on 4.4 broke things, you might just consider upgrading to a new major kernel version (e.g. 4.9).
volpial
5 Posts
0
February 28th, 2017 12:00
The present kernel is the latest xenial kernel. Ubuntu 15.04 is the current LTS system and I have not yet finished with application installation and users setup. I will try to install Fedora 25 on another partition, as soon as I find the time for doing this ...
Thanks for the suggestion.
Alessandro Volpi
volpial
5 Posts
0
February 28th, 2017 12:00
The present kernel is the latest xenial kernel. Ubuntu 15.04 is the current LTS system and I have not yet finished with application installation and users setup. I will try to install Fedora 25 on another partition, as soon as I find the t
cloojure
76 Posts
0
March 1st, 2017 10:00
I have the 9333 XPS 13 (2014 purchase) and it is working great with a clean install of Xenial 16.04
volpial
5 Posts
0
March 3rd, 2017 01:00
Next week I hope to be able to try following the steps suggested by tossadin. The i2c_his is already disabled in my system, although I have added the line in /etc/modprob.d/blacklist.conf instead of adding file / etc/modprob.d/i2c_hid.conf . I do not understand the meaning of the i8042.nopnp boot option, but I will try anyway.
Thanks.
volpial
5 Posts
0
March 7th, 2017 07:00
Today I have tried to complete the suggested procedure.
The command depmod -ae issued a warning : with -e option also -E or -F should be given; since it is a warning and not an error I assume that the command has anyway be executed.
I have looked in the depmod man page but I was not able to understand which is the argument to be given to option -E and -F .
In Ubuntu xenial (and also in Ubuntu trusty) directory modprob.d does not exist. I have inserted the blacklist file in /etc/modprobe.d
The new initramfs was successfully built.
The problem is that, after having completed the suggested procedure the touchpad IS STILL NOT WORKING.
Moreover the touchpad is not working any more even with kernel 4.4.0-62. This is not related to the suggested procedure, since I have observed the behavior before the grub options change. I have no idea about the reasons for such a regression.
At present the touchpad works only with trusty and kernel 3.13. Even with trusty and kernels 4.4 it the synaptics driver is not loaded and the device is DEAD.
At least the the use of 3.13 kernel shows that this is not an issue due to hardware malfunction.
sticksabuser
5 Posts
0
March 17th, 2023 18:00
This is the correct solution for older ubuntu distros. I was having this issue with a new install of ubuntu 22.04, for which the above solution needs to be amended and updated. I am writing it here in hopes that it helps someone else as I have not seen this update to the solution on any public online forum of any kind.
Also to clarify further for those not adept at the linux command line / terminal, all the commands in the original solution and this amended one need to be executed with root privileges, which can be done by either adding "sudo " before everyone of those commands, or by assuming the root user identity (sudo su).
The first 2 steps remain as is. For the third step, note that the name of the conf file won't matter; ex: I named it "i2c-touchpad.conf". However, we now need to also blacklist a second module:
blacklist i2c_hid_acpi
I added that to the beginning of that file, on its own line, as that seemed to be the module that was getting loaded. The fourth step also remains the same. The fifth one needs to be changed to:
update-initramfs -u
Note the addition of the hyphen. The last 2 steps also remain the same.
TL;DR: we are blacklisting a second module (i2c_hid_acpi), and updating one of the commands.
Cheers.