Touchpad does freeze sometimes.

[brunano21]

Hi,

when scrolling with two fingers. it happens that the touchpad behaves bad. In fact, when releasing the fingers it's like a touch with fingers is recognized, thus opening the context menu.
The only workaround I have found is to disable and then enable the mouse.

I'm running on
Linux XPS13 3.19.0-37-generic #42~14.04.1-Ubuntu

Anyone got the same issue? Any solution?
Thanks!

[andreasbehnke]

I had exactly the same issue running Ubuntu 14.04 . Even blacklisting ps2 driver did not help. This issue is fixed for me since I am running Ubuntu GNOME 15.10, without any further modification (for this
issue, for other issues 15.10 needs a little modification). Looking into the xevents I saw an issue with the touch screen: Sometimes the events fired by the touchpad looked like the events fired by the touchscreen. It looked like xserver mixed up these two devices after some time of usage (very vague analysis).

[davidbaumann]

Can you switch to 15.10?
I also realized much better battery runtime with kernel 4.2, so I would always recommend switching to 15.10.

[asmalldev]

I think I am experiencing the same issue running Arch. Unpredictably the clickpad will behave erratically and as if there are two fingers present on it rather than one (e.g. it will do two-finger scrolling and right clicks when I try to move the cursor using one finger on the pad). Blacklisting the psmouse module indeed didn't resolve it (think it was already using i2c_hid anyway).

In dmesg I have noticed that I consistently get from the i2c_hid module:

# dmesg | grep i2c

i2c_hid i2c-DLL0665:01: failed to retrieve report from device.
i2c_hid i2c-DLL0665:01: failed to retrieve report from device.
i2c_hid i2c-DLL0665:01: failed to retrieve report from device.
i2c_hid i2c-DLL0665:01: failed to retrieve report from device.
input: DLL0665:01 06CB:76AD UNKNOWN as /devices/pci0000:00/INT3433:00/i2c-1/i2c-DLL0665:01/0018:06CB:76AD.0001/input/input14

Which makes me think there is a problem with reading the HID Report descriptor from the hardware (described in the HID specification).

I get this error when on Linux 4.2.5 and still when I roll back to 4.1.13 (Arch LTS kernel).
On BIOS firmware A07.

@brunano21 anything from i2c_hid in your logs?
Maybe this extra info could help suss out what's going on.

Side note:
I'm curious if this may be something resolved by the touchpad firmware update, but I don't have time right now to monkey around with installing it from a .exe

[brunano21]

Here my dmesg:

br1@br1-XPS13:~$ dmesg | grep i2c
[    0.535875] i2c /dev entries driver
[    2.584695] i2c_hid i2c-DLL0665:01: failed to retrieve report from device.
[    2.593424] i2c_hid i2c-DLL0665:01: failed to retrieve report from device.
[    2.594314] i2c_hid i2c-DLL0665:01: failed to retrieve report from device.
[    2.596103] i2c_hid i2c-DLL0665:01: failed to retrieve report from device.
[    2.596182] input: DLL0665:01 06CB:76AD UNKNOWN as /devices/pci0000:00/INT3433:00/i2c-1/i2c-DLL0665:01/0018:06CB:76AD.0002/input/input12
[ 1116.435771] Modules linked in: btrfs xor raid6_pq ufs qnx4 hfsplus hfs minix ntfs msdos jfs xfs libcrc32c xt_conntrack ipt_MASQUERADE nf_nat_masquerade_ipv4 iptable_nat nf_conntrack_ipv4 nf_defrag_ipv4 nf_nat_ipv4 xt_addrtype iptable_filter ip_tables x_tables nf_nat nf_conntrack br_netfilter bridge stp llc aufs pci_stub vboxpci(OE) vboxnetadp(OE) vboxnetflt(OE) vboxdrv(OE) btusb dell_led snd_hda_codec_realtek snd_hda_codec_hdmi snd_hda_codec_generic uvcvideo videobuf2_vmalloc videobuf2_memops videobuf2_core v4l2_common dell_wmi sparse_keymap videodev hid_multitouch media intel_rapl iosf_mbi x86_pkg_temp_thermal dell_laptop intel_powerclamp coretemp dcdbas kvm_intel wl(POE) kvm rfcomm crct10dif_pclmul bnep crc32_pclmul bluetooth ghash_clmulni_intel aesni_intel snd_hda_intel aes_x86_64 joydev lrw snd_hda_controller gf128mul glue_helper snd_hda_codec ablk_helper cryptd snd_hwdep serio_raw snd_soc_rt286 i915_bpo snd_soc_core snd_compress snd_pcm_dmaengine snd_seq_midi cfg80211 snd_seq_midi_event snd_pcm intel_ips drm_kms_helper rtsx_pci_ms drm memstick lpc_ich snd_rawmidi i2c_algo_bit shpchp wmi snd_seq snd_seq_device snd_timer binfmt_misc snd soundcore nls_iso8859_1 soc_button_array i2c_hid snd_soc_sst_acpi int3400_thermal dw_dmac acpi_thermal_rel spi_pxa2xx_platform video dw_dmac_core int3402_thermal i2c_designware_platform int3403_thermal 8250_dw processor_thermal_device mac_hid i2c_designware_core acpi_pad parport_pc ppdev lp parport usbhid hid rtsx_pci_sdmmc psmouse ahci libahci rtsx_pci sdhci_acpi sdhci
[23418.077955] Modules linked in: ses enclosure uas usb_storage btrfs xor raid6_pq ufs qnx4 hfsplus hfs minix ntfs msdos jfs xfs libcrc32c xt_conntrack ipt_MASQUERADE nf_nat_masquerade_ipv4 iptable_nat nf_conntrack_ipv4 nf_defrag_ipv4 nf_nat_ipv4 xt_addrtype iptable_filter ip_tables x_tables nf_nat nf_conntrack br_netfilter bridge stp llc aufs pci_stub vboxpci(OE) vboxnetadp(OE) vboxnetflt(OE) vboxdrv(OE) btusb dell_led snd_hda_codec_realtek snd_hda_codec_hdmi snd_hda_codec_generic uvcvideo videobuf2_vmalloc videobuf2_memops videobuf2_core v4l2_common dell_wmi sparse_keymap videodev hid_multitouch media intel_rapl iosf_mbi x86_pkg_temp_thermal dell_laptop intel_powerclamp coretemp dcdbas kvm_intel wl(POE) kvm rfcomm crct10dif_pclmul bnep crc32_pclmul bluetooth ghash_clmulni_intel aesni_intel snd_hda_intel aes_x86_64 joydev lrw snd_hda_controller gf128mul glue_helper snd_hda_codec ablk_helper cryptd snd_hwdep serio_raw snd_soc_rt286 i915_bpo snd_soc_core snd_compress snd_pcm_dmaengine snd_seq_midi cfg80211 snd_seq_midi_event snd_pcm intel_ips drm_kms_helper rtsx_pci_ms drm memstick lpc_ich snd_rawmidi i2c_algo_bit shpchp wmi snd_seq snd_seq_device snd_timer binfmt_misc snd soundcore nls_iso8859_1 soc_button_array i2c_hid snd_soc_sst_acpi int3400_thermal dw_dmac acpi_thermal_rel spi_pxa2xx_platform video dw_dmac_core int3402_thermal i2c_designware_platform int3403_thermal 8250_dw processor_thermal_device mac_hid i2c_designware_core acpi_pad parport_pc ppdev lp parport usbhid hid rtsx_pci_sdmmc psmouse ahci libahci rtsx_pci sdhci_acpi sdhci
br1@br1-XPS13:~$ 

I already installed time ago the firmware you linked, but did not solve the problem though :(

[llaumgui]

I have also this message on 4.2 in Fedora 23

[asmalldev]

I am no longer experiencing this issue as of kernel 4.4 on my Arch installation. The touchpad hasn't frozen since moving to the new kernel and I no longer get i2c_hid i2c-DLL0665:01: failed to retrieve report from device. in the kernel log:

Additionally, you can see that the touchpad is now labeled as Touchpad rather than UNKNOWN and it has been successfully recognized by the hid-multitouch module.

# dmesg | grep i2c

input: DLL0665:01 06CB:76AD Touchpad as /devices/pci0000:00/INT3433:00/i2c-7/i2c-DLL0665:01/0018:06CB:76AD.0001/input/input12
hid-multitouch 0018:06CB:76AD.0001: input,hidraw0: I2C HID v1.00 Mouse [DLL0665:01 06CB:76AD] on i2c-DLL0665:01

I have not made any significant changes to my configuration since I last posted and the bug returns when I roll back to 4.1- which makes me think something in the new kernel/module code squashes the bug.

This was probably the last bug that kept me from feeling 100% comfortable on the XPS 13- I'm very glad to see it go 😁 Godspeed to 4.4, everyone!

[asmalldev]

Hi again everybody,

Unfortunately it turns out I jumped the gun with my last comment. I experienced the bug again today. My kernel log still looks the same as my last comment (no failure messages from i2c_hid). However, the touchpad continues to freeze on occasion.

But some better news is this: I think I have finally found good information about this issue.
See here: https://blogs.aerys.in/jeanmarc-leroux/2015/05/08/xps13-developer-edition-fixes/

So it seems that hid_multitouch needs to be patched. I took a look at the source or the Arch Linux Kernel I'm currently running (4.4) and it doesn't seem that a patch like the one in that blog post has been included. I'm patching and rebuilding my kernel. I'll post back here after I've finished building and tested it a while.

[brunano21]

@asmalldev hey, any updates on this?

[asmalldev]

@brunano21 Sorry I forgot to update everyone here. I did apply the patch above and then recompile my kernel. Bad new is: with the patch applied, instead of the touchpad behaving badly the kernel would simply panic/ everything would freeze.

I can't really say for sure whether or not the kernel was panicking instead of the touchpad freezing up (maybe the patch just introduced the kernel panic problem in addition to the touchpad problem). However, I ran the patched kernel for a number of days and not once did I encounter the touchpad freezing. The kernel would panic at what seemed to be about the same frequency that the touchpad would freeze before. This makes me think that maybe the touchpad issue is in this module, but the patch above is not an appropriate fix. I haven't had the time to try playing with the module code myself (and don't have much experience writing kernel modules, so I don't know if I'll be able to create a solution).

Like I mentioned, I think it's still a maybe whether or not the problem is this module at all. It could just be that the module code is always executed before the touchpad bug occurs so the module is irrelevant and the patch introduced a different problem entirely. Wish I could report better news, sorry 😞

[brunano21]

@asmalldev oh no worries. I was just asking if you could have updates. However today I have installed the new 16.04 and till now I did get this issue. But maybe I have been a bit lucky. Anyway I'll keep testing and playing and let you know how it goes.

[asmalldev]

@brunano21 Good to hear the latest Ubuntu release is giving you a better experience. Perhaps Canonical and Dell have cooperated to work in more fixes.

I also forgot to mention my suspicion that this is a hardware problem. It sounds crazy, but I can consistently make the cursor begin acting strange by hard-clicking on the bottom right corner of the touchpad. Is this the same for you @brunano21?

I'm starting to think there's some sort of electrical issue (things touching on the inside that aren't supposed to be) and this is made worse by clicking on the bottom right corner for some reason.

[hg8]

@asmalldev I can reproduce those weird cursor behavior by hard clicking corners of the touchpad (on Ubuntu & Arch Linux). However I never had touchpad freeze anymore since Ubuntu 14.04 (tested Ubuntu 15.04, 15.10 and Arch Linux).

[brunano21]

@asmalldev I have tried as you said and I did not get the issue. :/