Touchpad issues - Elantech PS/2

Question

I was able to getit working with:

sudo modprobe -r psmouse
sudo modprobe psmouse proto=imps 

My laptop's touchpad (Elantech, I think) is not working whatsoever.

I am dual-booting Win8.1 and Ubuntu 15.04 and it works fine when booted into Windows.

The touchpad is enabled in System Settings.

When I run xinput -list the output is:

 Virtual core pointer                       id=2    [master pointer  (3)]
⎜   ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer                id=4    [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ SIGMACHIP Usb Mouse                       id=10   [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad                  id=14   [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎣ Virtual core keyboard                     id=3    [master keyboard (2)]
    ↳ Virtual core XTEST keyboard               id=5    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Power Button                              id=6    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Video Bus                                 id=7    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Power Button                              id=8    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Sleep Button                              id=9    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ USB2.0 HD UVC WebCam                      id=11   [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Asus WMI hotkeys                          id=12   [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ AT Translated Set 2 keyboard              id=13   [slave  keyboard (3)]

Under windows, in device manager, the touchpad is listed as a PS/2 mouse and that's why I think it's Elantech.

Also, the output of lsmod includes:

psmouse               118784  0

which (to my understanding) means that a kernel module for ps/2 mouse is loaded, but not used by any devices.

Is this just a matter of getting the module to be used correctly with the touchpad? Or is it possible that I'm missing the driver entirely?

If it's a missing driver, Is there any site/repository where Linux developers upload drivers?

If I can't get the correct driver to be handed to me on a platter, please point me to a good place to begin writing one.

Any nudge in the right direction is appreciated, and If anyone needs further information in order to diagnose/solve the problem, I'll be at the terminal with my fingers on the keys.

dev@kernelPanic:~$ dmesg | grep pnp
[    0.843456] pnp: PnP ACPI init
[    0.843557] pnp 00:00: Plug and Play ACPI device, IDs PNP0b00 (active)
[    0.844084] pnp 00:03: Plug and Play ACPI device, IDs ETD0108 SYN0a00 SYN0002 PNP0f03 PNP0f13 PNP0f12 (active)
[    0.844175] pnp 00:04: Plug and Play ACPI device, IDs ATK3001 PNP030b (active)
[    1.047565] pnp: PnP ACPI: found 6 devices

Answer 1

There are two solutions for that (use one of these):

1. Install kernel 4.0.4. It supports your touchpad.
2. Install a driver using dkms.

First is obvious. For second directions are at Red Hat bugzilla

Just download that archive, extract it to /usr/src and run those commands. I did not test that package on 3.19 kernels. If there is some trouble you can uninstall it by

sudo dkms remove psmouse/etd0108 --all

And if many people kindly asks me to do it, I will add a package to my ppa for all supported versions of Ubuntu, like I did for Focaltech packages. ;-)

Answer 2

I recently upgraded to Ubuntu 15.10 and my Elantech Touchpad on my Acer Aspire Laptop stopped working completely. To my surprise I couldn't even find it in the hardware devices. After exhausting fails I made a small discovery that lead me to a fix.

After running DMESG and finding around the 3.5 mark when it initialized devices it mentioned an error in the PNP / TAP timing and had a note saying try running with "i8042.nopnp". (NO Device info was present, just the pnp/tap)

I edited the /etc/default/grub Added the recommended line to my entry to look like this:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash i8042.nopnp"

Saved the file and ran:

sudo update-grub

Rebooted and hit the function key + touchpad to enable/disable it and it worked exactly as expected to after. I noticed now in the DMESG that the timing error is gone. I mention looking at your DMESG output for that line because it's possible a different computer will have a different number in front of the .nopnp in "i8042.nopnp" that will need to be added to your grub entry.

I spent half a day trying other stuff with no success and I wanted to make sure this made it into the realm of things to try. I was able to remove the line and confirm it stopped working, add the line again and touchpad was working as expected.

This was a 100% fresh install of Ubuntu 15.10, the touchpad DID NOT work even in the setup and I used an external usb mouse to get me started. No system modifications were done at anytime, just installed and went straight to fixing the touchpad. Kernel Version is 4.4.2.

I hope this helps others!