Trackpoint on Lenovo X1 Carbon 3rd Gen

[grappler]

I am trying to configure the trackpoint on the machine in the title using the latest Ubuntu (16.04 Xenial) with Gnome as my desktop and running systemd. I've read around online and cannot find any conversation that seems to come close to solving the problem. The device does not seem to appear in any of the /sys/devices/platform/i8042/serio* directories, for instance - search for TrackPoint in these directories fails. Also xinput list is as follows:

Virtual core pointer id=2 [master pointer (3)] ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer id=4 [slave pointer (2)]
↳ PS/2 Synaptics TouchPad id=11 [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)]
↳ Sleep Button id=8 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ AT Translated Set 2 keyboard id=10 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ ThinkPad Extra Buttons id=12 [slave keyboard (3)]

I have disabled the TouchPad. The trackpoint is working but is far too sluggish and it is quite difficult to push the cursor round the screen. I've tried to set it according to this:

http://askubuntu.com/questions/59947...ckpad-and-wifi

and this:

http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/How_to...the_TrackPoint

One issue that has arisen is to find out which driver my system is using for the trackpoint. There appear to be two available - a synaptics one and an evdev one. How do I find the driver in use, and how do I switch to the other driver? When I do lsmod I see psmouse but nothing else that would seem to be a trackpoint driver. Thanks in advance for any assistance in this.

[Linuxisfast]

https://launchpad.net/~linrunner/+ar...hinkpad-extras would this help?

[grappler]

Thanks for your help but I tried that. Sorry should have mentioned but I tried many methods I found on the web without success. After installing configure-trackpoint from the linrunner repository, when I ran it I got the message that the trackpoint was not detected. But trackpoint is working - just not as I'd like.

[grappler]

I've made a little progress - for those of you with similar problems. When I run "sudo evtest" I see the following:

No device specified, trying to scan all of /dev/input/event*
Available devices:
/dev/input/event0: Lid Switch
/dev/input/event1: Sleep Button
/dev/input/event2: Power Button
/dev/input/event3: AT Translated Set 2 keyboard
/dev/input/event4: Video Bus
/dev/input/event5: PS/2 Synaptics TouchPad
/dev/input/event7: ThinkPad Extra Buttons
/dev/input/event8: HDA Intel HDMI HDMI/DP,pcm=3
/dev/input/event9: HDA Intel HDMI HDMI/DP,pcm=7
/dev/input/event10: HDA Intel HDMI HDMI/DP,pcm=8
/dev/input/event11: HDA Intel PCH Mic
/dev/input/event12: HDA Intel PCH Headphone
Select the device event number [0-12]:

When I selected 5, I could see the events created by moving the trackpoint and pressing the touchpad buttons. Evidently the word to search for in the serio directories is not "TrackPoint" but "TouchPad" - and so I did:

find /sys/devices/platform/i8042 -name name | xargs grep -Fl TouchPad | sed 's/\/sys\(.*\)\/name/\1/'


and discovered that it is in

/sys/devices/platform/i8042/serio1/input/input5


Now to work out how to configure - need to find where attributes like speed and sensitivity are set.

[grappler]

I seem to be the only one interested in this problem but in case there is someone else out there with similar problems, I'll give the fix I found.
I haven't yet discovered how to do this at start-up but I just type this:

xinput --set-prop 11 "libinput Accel Speed" 0.7

into the command line and it fixes the problem. The number 0.7 might be a bit high (or low) for some people but you can adjust.
The default setting - and the reason for the problem - is negative so the more I move the cursor
the harder it gets! I found the number 11 by typing xinput --list
The output was:


⎡ Virtual core pointer id=2 [master pointer (3)]
⎜ ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer id=4 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ PS/2 Synaptics TouchPad id=11 [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)]
↳ Sleep Button id=8 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ Integrated Camera id=9 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ AT Translated Set 2 keyboard id=10 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ ThinkPad Extra Buttons id=12 [slave keyboard (3)]

[grappler]

I'll reply to myself again. It appears that the device number is not statically assigned and
if you add a device or turn one off as I did the device number changes.

I found a shell script on the web that with a minor modification fixes the problem.

#!/bin/bash
# ~/bin/cursor_speed.sh


SEARCH="TouchPad"


if [ "$SEARCH" = "" ]; then
exit 1
fi


ids=$(xinput --list | awk -v search="$SEARCH" \
'$0 ~ search {match($0, /id=[0-9]+/);\
if (RSTART) \
print substr($0, RSTART+3, RLENGTH-3)\
}'\
)



for i in $ids
do
xinput set-prop $i 'libinput Accel Speed' 0.7
done

I don't claim any optimality (or robustness) for this but it does the job on my laptop.
Again you can replace 0.7 with any other number (between +1 and -1 I think).
I made it executable and put it in my startup applications.