User:Evandotpro/HP TM2T 2100

HP TM2T-2100 CTO Fedora 14 Issues:

By Evan Coury http://www.evan.pro/

1. Touchpad: Multi-touch on “SynPS/2 SynapticsTouchpad” is very buggy. When introducing a second finger to the pad, the cursor jumps all over the place until you remove the finger. (BZ #613220)
   1. This problem has since randomly cured itself. I did not do anything to address the issue, and there were no updates to the drivers, but after a random reboot, a second finger produces the expected cursor behavior instead of the random jumping. I’m not sure what caused this or how to reproduce it now. Interestingly, the issue is also no longer happening when I boot the Live version of Fedora 14 without updates, so it most definitely does not have to do with any updates. There are also no bios settings for the mouse, and I didn’t touch the bios either, so I know it’s not that.
2. Touchpad: Hard-press right-click on “SynPS/2 SynapticsTouchpad” does not work... it is always interpreted as a left click no matter where your finder is when you press down. (BZ #613220)
   1. Randomly, one time I rebooted, and noticed that my tap-to-click setting was not working, only hard-press clicks worked. I went to re-enable it in the mouse settings in Gnome, and the “Touchpad” tab was missing. Strangely, however, hard-press right and left clicks were working perfectly. It knew exactly where my finger was and performed the correct click accordingly. I had installed gpointing-device-settings earlier, but had rebooted several times since without this happening, so I’m not sure that’s the cause.
   2. Update: I was able to reproduce it. I re-installed gpointing-device-settings and after a few reboots it’s back to doing it again. Here are all the logs like evtest, dmesg, Xorg.0.log, etc for when the mouse is behaving this way.
   3. Some additional details for when the hard-press clicks are working:
      1. The “Touchpad” tab is definitely missing from the mouse preferences. Only General and Accessibility are available.
      2. synclient -l returns “Couldn’t find synaptics properties. No synaptics driver loaded?”
      3. GPointing Device Settings still shows PS/2 but it shows a mouse icon instead of a touchpad icon, and there’s no touchpad specific settings anywhere, like “tap touchpad to click”:
         1. [[Image:]]
         2. [[Image:]]
      4. Update #2: Okay it seems to change every time I shut down and power back up. For instance:
         1. Booted with original issues where tap-to-click works but all hard-press clicks regardless of right or left are registered as left clicks. Mouse preferences has touchpad tab.
         2. Shut down, boot back up.
         3. Now the hard-press right and left clicks work perfectly but soft tap to click does not work and touchpad settings are missing. In GDM (Gnome login screen), the tap to click (not pressing till you hear “click”) works as expected, but once logged in, only hard press clicks work.
         4. Shut down, boot back up.
         5. Now everything is working perfect! Tap-to-click works, hard press right and left clicks work as expected, etc. It’s all perfect. EXCEPT, the touchpad settings are missing still. (Can’t disable touchpad while typing, etc)
         6. Shut down, boot back up.
         7. Back to original issue... All hard press clicks are left clicks. Touchpad settings are now back.
3. Touchpad: On the touchpad, there is a area in the top left corner with an LED. On Win7, you double tap that corner, and the amber LED turns on, indicating that the touchpad has been turned off. Double tapping again, turns the LED off and the touchpad back on. This doesn’t work at all. (At least mentioned by me in Comment #4 in BZ #613220 but may deserve it’s own BZ)
   1. I did notice something in either dmesg or Xorg.0.log at one point that mentioned an error about “Touchpad_On” and “Touchpad_Off” inputs, but I forgot to save them. I will try locating those messages again, as I believe they’re very relevant.
4. Video: Initially, the switchable graphics (integrated Intel and ATI Radeon 5000 series) is stuck using the ATI card, which draws at least an extra 10 amps and the Radeon module/drivers do not support 3D for switchable graphics cards.
   1. Because I was forced to install using “basic video”, the installer added nomodeset to the kernel options. Having nomodeset disables the vga_switcheroo module, which is needed to power off the discreet ATI card.
   2. Removing nomodeset from the kernel options causes the LCD to turn off as soon as the kernel finishes it’s posting process and the init scripts start. Removing rhgb and/or quiet does not solve this. A strange work-around for this is that plugging in an external monitor to the VGA port works, and then you can unplug the external monitor and the laptop’s LCD screen will come on. This at least allows you to get to a desktop with the nomodeset option removed.
   3. I added “echo OFF > /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch” to my /etc/rc.local in order to automatically turn off the ATI card during the boot process. This seems to work, but causes a bunch of “atom_execute_table_locked] *ERROR* atombios stuck executing” errors, which I think are caused because the radeon module is still trying to communicate with the ATI card, but it’s powered off. I added “modprobe -r radeon” to /etc/rc.local, but I’m not sure that’s working reliably.
   4. As a work-around so I don’t have to keep using an external monitor, I added “xrandr --output LVDS1 --off” and “xrandr --output LVDS1 --auto” to my /etc/gdm/PreSession/Default script... this way, the screen is still off once it gets to the login screen, but at least I can log on blindly, then once the gnome session starts and the xrandr commands run, the laptop screen comes on.
   5. Something is causing a kernal crash on about 1 out of 3 boot ups. I think it might be the attempted “modprobe -r radeon” in my /etc/rc.local … still need to test that.
   6. Check out my dmesg[1]here...
      1. Between 6.065167 and 8.469180 are relevant to the video stuff.
      2. Somewhere between 7.055760 and 8.041751 is where the laptop LCD shuts off. (It flickers off and on once before that too.)
5. Video: There does not seem to be a way to get the HDMI port to work, regardless if using ATI or Intel video.
6. The FN+F2/F3 keys (brightness decrease and increase) have no affect using either the Intel or ATI graphics. In both, they trigger the gnome brightness pop up and the bar steps up and down, but the screens actual backlight is stuck at 100% always when it is on.
7. The FN+F4 key (toggle external monitor) is recognized as the “p” key. (BZ #598001)
8. Using the ATI graphics, closing the lid does put the laptop into standby, however the screen never comes back on when opening the lid.
9. Using the Intel graphics, closing the lid tries to put the laptop into standby, but it just gets stuck on the fedora logo screen and never goes into standby.
10. There are some ACPI errors in dmesg... between 30.734066 and 31.398768 … I think they could be related to possibly more than one of these issues. Maybe the bios on this laoptop is buggy?