Jumpy trackpad tracking

Bug Description

I am not sure this is the right package, but from what I understand, Xorg treats my trackpad like a mouse. More on that later.

I report this bug against current Dapper Drake, tested with the livecd from 25022006
The problem is this: The cursor jumps annoyingly much when tracking small movements.
Steps to Reproduce
1. Find a webpage or document to scroll
2. Grab the scroll thumb (that widget in the scrollbar) and keep the first mouse button pressed
3. Try to do small drags with the index finger on the trackpad..
Result:
At least half of the small drags and most of the large drags work fine, and the document scrolls. However, all too often the mouse is tracked softly for the short distance, only to jump up/back when the finger is lifted short thereafter.
This is very annoying when using the scroll thumb to read a document.
This behaviour is not present in Ubuntu Breezy.

About the trackpad: This is a standard iBook G4 with a trackpad and one button.
About trackpads, Xorg.0.log reports

(II) Synaptics touchpad driver version 0.14.3
Synaptics Touchpad no synaptics event device found (checked 16 nodes)

and about mice

(II) XINPUT: Adding extended input device "Configured Mouse" (type: MOUSE)
(II) Configured Mouse: ps2EnableDataReporting: succeeded

I only have the trackpad -- no mouse connected, so the mouse driver must be handling the trackpad.

I have relocated this bug to the synaptics driver. Could the original reporter or anyone experiencing the issue please post a tail of the /var/log/messages like so:

1. Open terminal
2. enter: tail -n 100 /var/log/messages > myMessageLog.txt
3. attach that txt file to this bug.

I think this is a synaptics mouse sync issue and i am hoping to confirm that with your log. thx, -mf

as you can see the synaptic driver is consistently losing sync.

I have found out that this issue relates to trackpad taps. If I turn off taps, [sudo trackpad notap], this doesn't happen.

Close, or still a bug? I can't use trackpad taps because of this.

I would keep it as a bug under synaptics for the time being, since turning off taps is only an interim solution instead of an absolute solution. (IE, it affects something else instead of outright fixing it.)

Can the reporter test this issue using Edgy 6.10 so we can see if the issue still exists?

I can confirm the bug still exists in Feisty 7.04. (2.6.20-15-generic #2 SMP)

with "dmesg", I get for each time the mouse got stuck for a few seconds,
for example:
5 times: "[14868.324000] psmouse.c: TouchPad at isa0060/serio2/input0 lost sync at byte 1"
and after that: [14868.328000] psmouse.c: issuing reconnect request

Synaptic Kernel info:
[ 25.852000] Synaptics Touchpad, model: 1, fw: 4.1, id: 0x848a1, caps: 0x0/0x0
[ 25.892000] input: SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad as /class/input/input3

This bug still exists under Gutsy (2.6.22-14-generic). And I can't find a package contains the binar "trackpad" gutsy.

I am also experiencing the same problem on gutsy with a macbook 1st generation.
Basically after several hours of laptop usage, the touchpad seems have weird behavior (moves the cursor to the center of the screen after I touch it, and makes the external mouse extremely jumpy), after which I need to either restart X (in which case the touchpad will completely stop to work) or reboot.

how can I provide input to help fix this issue ?

I can confirm the bug in 7.10 on AMD64. The machine is a Compaq Presario V5000.
Attached here is the messages tail of one incident of control loss.
For me it seemed like disabling taps helped, but turns out it didn't, just a random coincidence.

There seems to be a lot of information about this in Bug #96596. I've marked that bug a duplicate of this one because the root of the problem stems from the TouchPad losing sync in psmouse.c of the kernel.

Beginning with the Hardy Heron 8.04 development cycle, all open Ubuntu kernel bugs need to be reported against the "linux" kernel package. We are automatically migrating this bug to the new "linux" package. However, development has already began for the upcoming Intrepid Ibex 8.10 release. It would be helpful if you could test the upcoming release and verify if this is still an issue - http://www.ubuntu.com/testing . If the issue still exists, please update this report by changing the Status of the "linux" task from "Incomplete" to "New". We appreciate your patience and understanding as we make this transition. Thanks!