Synaptics touchpad gestures no longer work (kernel drivers issue?)
Sorry if this gets long, but I wanna give all the clues I have on this.
I have an Acer SF315-41G laptop with a touchpad listed on
/proc/bus/input/devices as "SYNA7DB5:00 06CB:7DB7 Touchpad". I'm running
Trixie now, but the issue started on Bookworm. I am also running GNOME.
I've been running Debian on this laptop for more than a year now. I had
to do some setup back then to get gestures to work on my touchpad, but I
got it working with no problems. But the other day, while using it, my
computer ran out of battery. I booted it back up as normal, but now, all
of a sudden, my touchpad works in a "generic" way: I can tap but not
left-click; I can right-click but not tap with two fingers; and forget
about all kinds of multiple finger scrolling.
Just to clarify, because someone on Reddit suggested it: no, I didn't
accidentally end up on a Xorg session. I'm on Wayland. And I'm quite
sure it is not a hardware issue because I have a dual-boot and Windows
gets all gestures as expected.
My first instinct was to try rebooting to the previous kernel version
(from 6.1.0-37 to 6.1.0-35) and gestures worked as they should. So I
upgraded to Debian 13 hoping it was an issue in that single version, but
when I booted on 6.12.38 I went back to generic functionality. 6.1.0-35
was still installed so I tried booting it up, but I didn't have the good
results I'd had before: no gestures again. There was a security update
today for the kernel (6.12.41) and I tried that, but nothing different.
The biggest hint of a problem shows up in dmesg:
[ 0.221528] ACPI BIOS Error (bug): Failure creating named object
[\_SB.MACO], AE_ALREADY_EXISTS (20240827/dswload2-326)
[ 0.221546] ACPI Error: AE_ALREADY_EXISTS, During name lookup/catalog
(20240827/psobject-220)
[ 2.218537] i2c i2c-1: SMBus Timeout!
[ 2.218579] i2c i2c-1: Failed reset at end of transaction (01)
[ 2.218673] i2c i2c-1: Failed! (01)[ 0.221528] ACPI BIOS Error
(bug): Failure creating named object [\_SB.MACO], AE_ALREADY_EXISTS
(20240827/dswload2-326)
[ 0.221546] ACPI Error: AE_ALREADY_EXISTS, During name lookup/catalog
(20240827/psobject-220)
[ 2.218537] i2c i2c-1: SMBus Timeout!
[ 2.218579] i2c i2c-1: Failed reset at end of transaction (01)
[ 2.218673] i2c i2c-1: Failed! (01)
From 'libinput list-devices':
Device: SYNA7DB5:00 06CB:7DB7 Mouse
Kernel: /dev/input/event6
Id: i2c:06cb:7db7
Group: 6
Seat: seat0, default
Capabilities: pointer
Tap-to-click: n/a
Tap-and-drag: n/a
Tap button map: n/a
Tap drag lock: n/a
Left-handed: disabled
Nat.scrolling: disabled
Middle emulation: n/a
Calibration: n/a
Scroll methods: *button
Scroll button: BTN_RIGHT
Scroll button lock: disabled
Click methods: none
Clickfinger button map: n/a
Disable-w-typing: n/a
Disable-w-trackpointing: n/a
Accel profiles: flat *adaptive custom
Rotation: n/a
Area rectangle: n/a
Device: SYNA7DB5:00 06CB:7DB7 Touchpad
Kernel: /dev/input/event7
Id: i2c:06cb:7db7
Group: 6
Seat: seat0, default
Size: 103x75mm
Capabilities: touch
Tap-to-click: n/a
Tap-and-drag: n/a
Tap button map: n/a
Tap drag lock: n/a
Left-handed: n/a
Nat.scrolling: n/a
Middle emulation: n/a
Calibration: identity matrix
Scroll methods: none
Scroll button: n/a
Scroll button lock: n/a
Click methods: none
Clickfinger button map: n/a
Disable-w-typing: n/a
Disable-w-trackpointing: n/a
Accel profiles: n/a
Rotation: 0.0
Area rectangle: n/a
Lastly, in the session where the battery died I had installed
gnome-boxes, virt-viewer and timeshift -this last one with which I made
a snapshot-; this is the only thing that might keep me from firmly
believing that this is a kernel issue.
So, what should I take from this? Should I report a bug on the kernel?
Or might I have accidentally messed up something?
Thank you in advance for your support.
Reply to: