Synaptics touchpad & keyboard on Toshiba Satellite M30

[Alessandro Ghigi <ghigi@dimat.unipv.it>]

Hi.

I have a Debian SARGE on a Toshiba Satellite M30.
I have a 2.6.7 kernel and various nvidia related debs.
I also installed xfree86-driver-synaptics.


I have the following PROBLEMS:

1) when I touch the touchpad (not the button) it often does not respond, and I have to touch again several times with increased strength.
2) when I type on the keuboard, very often the characters are not recognized (I guess), they stop being displayed on the terminal. Sometimes they just get displayed after a while, some other times one of them is repeated for a bunch of times.

I checked the page of Marco Kraus:
http://www.linuxstuff.de/toshiba-m30/toshiba-m30.htm
and found he also had problem (2), together with suggestions to correct them. He in fact advises not to install the synaptic driver, and to recompile the kernel after some changes by hand in some of the .c files of the kernel. He uses a Linux-original 2.6.8 kernel.

I wonder if some other (and possibly more standard) way is available now (since Kraus' page is some 4 months old). Since I am no expert, I would much prefer to stick to a more Debian-standard approach.

Thank you very much in advance

Alessandro Ghigi