Touchpad Stops Working When Switch User

Question

One oddity I've found with my new E1505N Ubuntu laptop, that I don't find posted in the forums yet, is that when I 'Switch User' (instead of Log Off) and sign on as another user, the touchpad does not work. A separate USB mouse does work fine after switching to another user, but the touchpad consistently does not. However, I accidentally discovered that if I 'cancel' the login attempt after Switch User, and drop back to the locked screen for the original user that I signed on as, and there click 'Switch User', that this time when I sign on, the touchpad works. This seems to be consistent, repeatable behavior in my testing so far. So, if like me you discover your touchpad is dead when you do a Switch User, attach a USB mouse to recover your control... if you don't have one, like I didn't to start with, the only option I had was to kill Xorg by Ctrl-Alt-Backspace and let it drop me back to the locked screen of the original signed-on user. Regardless of how you regain control, you need to sign off of the user you switched to, which takes you back to the locked screen of the original user. Click the 'Switch User' button there, and sign on again as the second user. This time, in my experience, the touchpad will work. Then again, it's entirely possible that having the USB mouse hooked up may have something to do with the touchpad beginning to function, but I don't really think that's the case. It will require more people to experiment and report back on this issue to verify whether or not this workaround of mine is indeed a good one.

davesmith2006 · Answer

Wow, ain't that something odd. :)

I tested it on my laptop here, and it did exactly the same, even with the USB mouse. However, I also found that if I pressed CTRL-ALT-7 to go back to my current X session, followed by CTRL-ALT-9 to jump over to the new session (press CTRL-ALT 8 onward until you find it) the touchpad worked. Looking in the log file for X, /var/log/Xorg.20.log (could be any number greater than 0), I see

Synaptics DeviceOn called
(--) Synaptics Touchpad auto-dev sets device to /dev/input/event3
(**) Option "Device" "/dev/input/event3"
(--) Synaptics Touchpad touchpad found
(II) Configured Mouse: ps2EnableDataReporting: succeeded
Synaptics DeviceOff called

I don't see a DeviceOff message in my normal log /var/log/Xorg0.log

Any suggestions as to faults?

Linux General

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