[SOLVED] Synaptics touchpad not working

[Gear.0]

I have a synaptics touchpad on my "HP Compaq nc6320" laptop.

I have followed this guide in trying to get it to work:
http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/Synaptics_Touchpad

I have the kernel components compiled in that are listed and the INPUT_DEVICES="synaptics" options in my make.conf, and I've emerged the xf86-input-synaptics driver.

I should also say that originally I didn't have either "hal" or "-hal" as a USE flag option, so I guess I had the defaults of whatever, then I added USE="-hal" and re emerged everything without 'hal' support.

But I do have my xorg.conf set up the same way as it is shown in that guide in the link I posted above.


The touchpad does actually seem functional..
if I do any of the following:
cat /dev/input/mice
cat /dev/input/mouse0
cat /dev/input/event6
I can see output to the terminal whenever I move or click my touchpad mouse.

However, it just doesn't seem to work with the XServer. When I run 'startx' which brings up OpenBox, I can't move my mouse unless I plug in an external usb mouse.

I've also tried adding:
Option "Device" "/dev/input/mouse0"
to my xorg.conf (note: I have tried all three of the /dev/input devices I listed above in bold) none of them worked.


I am just at a loss, I have been researching this for a few days, it really seems to me that everything is set up and configured perfectly.. I just don't know where to go from here. I am not getting any error messages or warnings to point me in the right direction. I just don't know what to try next.
Please help.

[Gusar]

Which xorg-server?

If 1.7, you should use HAL and configure the touchpad in fdi files, though it should already work without configuration, just maybe not exactly how you want.
If 1.8, don't use HAL and configure the touchpad in xorg.conf - but not as it's shown on that page, that's outdated. However, like before, it should work without any configuration.

[Gear.0]

It is 1.7

I am doing emerge --newuse world with the new USE flag 'hal'.

I is emerging the synatpics driver, xorg-server, and vlc.

[Gear.0]

Ok it is done, and I added an fdi file to:
/etc/hal/fdi/policy/11-x11-synaptics.fdi

with the content:

[Gusar]

To get keyboard and mouse with 1.7 and HAL, you need xf86-input-evdev (you need it for 1.8 too, for that matter). No idea why synaptics doesn't work. Have you restarted HAL after re-emerging stuff? Or possibly simplest method - add HAL to the default runlevel, then reboot.
Another thing to try - is the touchpad working outside of X?

For 1.8, xorg.conf would look like this:

[Gear.0]

Awesome, it is working now!

I re-emerged hal with the laptop "use" flag (although I'm not sure if this did anything).
and I emerged the evdev driver.

But, yet another stupid mistake... I never started hal.
after doing
/etc/init.d/hald start everything is working now.
I also added hald to start automatically with rc-update

thank you.

[LEVIAYAN]

be careful. With gnome, there is also System => Preferences => Mouse => touchpad. You need to verify what are the options ...
For synaptics, there are a lot of things : hal and fdi'files, xorg and xf86-input-synaptics, gnome ... And hal will be remplaced by deviceKit ..
Best regards,
Yann