Bug 1324424

This may only be due to my specific model of laptop. If that is the case a suitable workaround would be some command that lets me turn on and off my touchpad as needed. Most of the time I use my mouse, but there are times when I am using my laptop walking around and the touchpad would be more useful.

does the button send any events? run sudo evemu-record against the various devices and see if you can find one that sends an event when you press the button. if not, we're talking about a kernel problem here.

evemu-record does not show any events for pressing the touchpad on/off button.

In the reddit thread Synclient was suggested - when I tried that synclient seemed to think my synaptics driver was not loaded. There was also a suggestion that I try my next oldest kernel (the other choice in GRUB) 

Choosing the older one - now my on-off button is working.
Synclient still thinks the synaptics driver is not loaded.

[rhudson@tiros ~]$ synclient -l
Couldn't find synaptics properties. No synaptics driver loaded?
[rhudson@tiros ~]$ sudo synclient -l
[sudo] password for rhudson: 
Couldn't find synaptics properties. No synaptics driver loaded?
[rhudson@tiros ~]$ synclient touchpadOff=0
Couldn't find synaptics properties. No synaptics driver loaded?
[rhudson@tiros ~]$

synaptics isn't used by default since F22 anymore, we're now using the libinput based xorg driver (xorg-x11-drv-libinput). that synclient command has no equivalent in libinput because that particular feature is handled completely internally now rather than by polling. so you can ignore that advice, it's outdated and wrong.


if evemu-record doesn't show anything that means the kernel doesn't send an event for the button, so nothing can handle it. which indicates that it's not synaptics but rather a kernel update that broke this. can you try some of your older kernels to see if this is a regression in a specific version?

My grub menu currently shows 2 kernels. The button works correctly when the older one is selected. The button fails when the newwer one is selected.

Where can I get the menu GRUB presents so I can get that info for your consideration?

I booted into each of the two kernals and tested the button. 

Older Kernal - Works ok.
[rhudson@tiros ~]$ uname -a
Linux tiros 4.2.3-300.fc23.x86_64 #1 SMP Mon Oct 5 15:42:54 UTC 2015 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
[rhudson@tiros ~]$ 


Newwer Kernal - fails
[rhudson@tiros ~]$ uname -a
Linux tiros 4.4.6-300.fc23.x86_64 #1 SMP Wed Mar 16 22:10:37 UTC 2016 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
[rhudson@tiros ~]$

New version of kernel added to my grub in recent update - 4.4.6-301 - Problem still exists in this kernel too.

Any Updates?

Well, there has been numerous updates in the toshiba_acpi driver that controls the touchpad on/off key since v4.2.

Before I ask you to do a tedious bisect, would you mind testing the currents f24 and/or f26 kernels:
http://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/buildinfo?buildID=753776
http://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/buildinfo?buildID=754788

(there is a repo to automatically pull them https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/RawhideKernelNodebug).

Also, please provide an udev db export with the working kernel and the non-working one (using "sudo udevadm info --export-db").

Hi Benjamin,

I don't know how to do a bisect so I would not be able to help much there.

I will see what I can do about getting and trying those F24 and F26 kernels, but bear in mind that this is my production machine. I don't want to mess it up too much..

I will try getting the output from udevadm you ask for. It will be a few days till my weekend before I can get to any of this tho.

Ron.

just wondering - Ronald, any updates here?

I am not sure I still have the oldest kernel available as there have been several updates since we started - but here is the output for my current kernel:

<< could not paste output to this window - too big>>

I will see if I can upload it separately

Created attachment 1155259 [details]
output requested for most recent kernel

This is the output from the most recent kernal and the one I am running right now.
Linux tiros 4.4.8-300.fc23.x86_64 #1 SMP Wed Apr 20 16:59:27 UTC 2016 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

P.S. this is a non-working kernel. 

My trackpad is currently enabled. I enabled it last time the button worked and it has stayed enabled so far. This is a low priority for me, if others are complaining that would make it more important, but if I am an only voice then perhaps it is just a fluke of my machine. 

I have just installed the latest ubuntu workstation on another hard drive - I did not think to check if there is a problem there. I can't say when the next time I will boot that will be but I will try to remember to check there when I do.

4.4.9-300 has fixed the problem. Whatever difference there was from 4.4.8-300 was what did it. 

I just dnf upgrade and got the new kernel, I have rebooted and I am up an running in the firefox browser and (push push push) yup it works.

It's fixed but we probably do not know why.

Thank you for letting us know.