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Rescuing mouse/trackpad/keyboard control on a Lenovo P50

in flag
MRule

History

  • Ubuntu Mate, 20.04 on a Lenovo P50. All fine until yesterday.
  • Automatic updates (Oct. 2021) broke the trackpad.
  • I followed these instructions. They didn't work. They also aren't supposed to be permanent, so hopefully no worries --- but I mention it in case this did change something permanently.
  • I followed this answer, reinstalling xserver-xorg-input-synaptics. This may have worked. In any case, the touchpad was partially working after a reboot.

Problems

  • After this "fix", "tap to click" was re-enabled, and was way too sensitive. The laptop was unusable: click would trigger while typing causing the cursor to jump randomly.
  • I tried to disable "tap to click", but the trackpad control panel no longer exists.
  • To fix this, I tried to follow this answer. However, if followed literally, the indicated steps break all input devices

So! I how have a Lenovo P50 laptop

  • With no working trackpad or keyboard
  • Which won't respond to an external mouse or keyboard
  • Which doesn't have a SSH server running so I can't remote into it

How does one get this machine working again, and also: how does one resolve the original issues with the trackpad that made the machine unusable?

Sorry for the lack of system configuration information, I can't run any commands on the machine so I can't provide their outputs ( :

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avatar Ubuntu
in flag
MRule

This resolved it:

  1. Reboot machine; Hold esc while booting to get the grub menu to appear.
  2. In my case keyboard navigation of the grub menu didn't seem to work at first --- but actually was just slow. I had to wait a second to see a response after each key press.
  3. Use the up/down arrows to select "Advanced Options for Ubuntu" and press enter. On my machine, this led to an empty screen. It's supposed to show a list of previously installed kernels, along with some options to boot into a "recovery mode".
  4. Despite the "invisible grub" issue, I pressed the down arrow several times, then "enter". This loaded the recovery mode menu (with some garbled text overlaid).
  5. Use the arrow keys to select root: Drop to root shell prompt
  6. Run apt-get install xserver-xorg-input-libinput
  7. Run rebooot now

After performing these steps, the trackpad worked and the trackpad control center reappeared. I was able to select "disable touchpad while typing" to resolve the original issue.

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