Synaptics driver doesn't load sometimes

Question

Sometimes (randomly), the synaptics touchpad driver won't load on bootup. When reading /var/log/boot.log, i don't see anything touchpad-driver-like being started when this happens.

But the file /dev/input/mouse0 exists and I can perform simple actions with my mousepad (pointing, clicking, but no scrolling) and the pointer speed is very low when moving it via the touchpad.

When typing synclient into terminal while this is happening, it tells me Couldn't find synaptics properties. No synaptics driver loaded?

Whats the problem here?

Solution

I started having this problem after upgrading from 12.04 to 14.04. Tried purging / reinstalling xserver-xorg-input-synaptics, but the problem persisted. I decided to browse the available packages in Synaptic Package Manager, and found this:

xserver-xorg-input-synaptics-lts-trusty

I installed it alongside the other ("generic") package. Hopefully this fixes the issue.

Comments

[s3lph]

Touchpad procession of Xorg is done by xserver-xorg-input-synaptics. So i doubt it will have an effect.

[Admin]

Sorry, did you try reinstall it?

[s3lph]

Yes, both input-mouse ans input-synaptics. But I can only tell after a few days whether it worked.

[Admin]

Try : sudo apt-get purge xserver-xorg-input-synaptics && sudo apt-get install xserver-xorg-input-synaptics . Purging is needed to remove malconfiguration.

[Fabby]

Going out on a limb here as it's one of those pesky "sometimes" errors. Have you tried moving the synaptics /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/5?-synaptics*.conf to /etc/X11/xorg.conf as "the X Server treats the collection of configuration files as one big file with entries from xorg.conf at the end" (from the manual) and I'm suspecting a timing-based issue... (And no one has provided any suggestion in nearly a year nor provided this feed-back)

[Kraig Brockschmidt - MSFT]

Potentially [duplicate issue?][1]. Can you try the workaround from that question? [1]: askubuntu.com/questions/579293/…

[underscore_d]

I fail to see how a "Hopefully" was accepted as the answer. SE is meant to form a knowledge base, but I came to this high search-ranked thread expecting info, and the accepted answer tells me nothing. Did that package solve this? for you or the OP? Still, since I have the same problem on Debian 8.2, installing a Ubuntu specific version is not an option for me (which, sorry, but makes this even less useful).