[SOLVED] New kernel driver for the BCM5974 touchpad (Macbook Air, Penryn)

[kosumi68]

I have a MBA and I've tried to follow this guide to the very limit my brain lets me. One thing puzzles me a bit tough. I've added the size of the MBA's touchpad which, if i understood it correctly, should disable the "right-edge-of-touchpad-scroll". But it has not...?

Just to make sure what your setup is, could you perhaps provide the output of this command:

/usr/src/bcm5974-0.58/scripts/bcm5974-diagnostics

[Red/Grey]

Before i had the chance to try the answers i got., I somehow managed to make my keyboard stop working... Since I'm very new to this i took the easy way out and reinstalled Ubuntu from scratch.

After following this thread a second time, the driver works just fine!

Thanks for the effort!

[e-gandalf]

I installed daily Ubuntu 8.10 on MBP Penryn and the new drive doesn't work

If I try to do rmmod bcm5974;rmmod usbhci;modprobe bcm5974;modpobe usbhci the keyboard/mouse (usb) stop responding after rmmod usbhci, but it doesn't help at all...

Trying the diagnostic script tells me:

"Can't access shared memory area. SHMConfig disabled?" even when usbhci is unloaded.

after reloading bcm5974 dmesg says:

[12920.447443] usbcore: deregistering interface driver bcm5974
[12924.742711] input: bcm5974 as /class/input/input35
[12924.812366] usbcore: registered new interface driver bcm5974


Any help?

[kosumi68]

I believe you are first out to test this on the complete Intrepid distro - I only tested the 2.6.27 kernel so far myself.

First of all - make sure all references to the DKMS version are viped out - this includes checking with modprobe -l that only the 2.6.27 version of bcm5974 is available, and that no reference to bcm5974 is present in /etc/modprobe.d/ (uninstalling the driver with dkms should do the trick).

This is the experience you should expect from the 2.6.27 kernel: When booting, the bcm5974 driver should pick the trackpad up, and according to

[12924.742711] input: bcm5974 as /class/input/input35

it does, registering an input device for it. What puzzles me is the /class part. If you check /proc/bus/input/devices, you should find a bcm5974 device in there. If not, that would explain why synaptics does not pick it up. Another possibility is that the problem is related to the new xorg server version - see http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.p...ds#post5293527.

[e-gandalf]

is it possible that there's a conflict with nvidia glx driver? It installs some DKMS (at least that's what was in the log from nvidia driver installation)

regarding /proc:

root@gbook:~# cd /proc/bus/input/devices
bash: cd: /proc/bus/input/devices: Not a directory

[kosumi68]

I dont think this is related to any other driver. I will be back with some further testing - thanks for the reports!

[kosumi68]

I tested Interpid daily today, 31AUG2008. The kernel is now 2.6.27-2, and the bcm5974 driver is loaded and installed properly; it is represented in the file /proc/bus/input/devices. As reported by e-gandalf, the mouse does not move. This has to do with the bcm5974 acting as a trackpad only - not as an ordinary mouse. After configuring the /etc/X11/xorg.conf, in my case by copying the one from my hardy installation, the mouse is working fine.

In summary, the trackpad driver works fine given a proper configuration of the synaptics driver.

It would make a lot of sense if the bcm5974 driver could also act as an ordinary mouse, as suggested earlier in this thread. I will look into it.

[cyberdork33]

follow the bug report here:
https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/mact...rt/+bug/263451

[kosumi68]

The bcm5974-0.60 is out!

This version includes a mouse compatibility mode, and works even without configuring the Xorg synaptics driver. The features of the mouse mode are in short:

* The default Xorg configuration will pick up the mouse input interface, resulting in a functional mouse pointer out-of-the-box.

* Two-finger scroll works without the need to configure the synaptics driver.

* Multi-finger button emulation, which currently only exists in the mactel version of the synaptics driver, works out-of-the-box.

* The mouse driver also works with gpm in text consoles, providing cut-and-paste functionality via the multi-button emulation.

The version is available for hardy at http://web.comhem.se/rydberg/Bits/.

Enjoy!

[cyberdork33]

The bcm5974-0.60 is out!

This version includes a mouse compatibility mode, and works even without configuring the Xorg synaptics driver. The features of the mouse mode are in short:

* The default Xorg configuration will pick up the mouse input interface, resulting in a functional mouse pointer out-of-the-box.

* Two-finger scroll works without the need to configure the synaptics driver.

* Multi-finger button emulation, which currently only exists in the mactel version of the synaptics driver, works out-of-the-box.

* The mouse driver also works with gpm in text consoles, providing cut-and-paste functionality via the multi-button emulation.

The version is available for hardy at http://web.comhem.se/rydberg/Bits/.

Enjoy!

Interesting that you decided to put all that in the actual kernel driver. I guess that makes it easier for the one-button touchpads though.