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How to reset touchpad driver?

in flag
Cerin

A problem I've noticed on several laptops running Ubuntu is that, after a few days or weeks, the touchpad will often become unresponsive. Attaching an external mouse will work, but the touchpad remains disabled. The only solution I've found is to reboot the laptop.

I've experienced this problem on a Macbook and a Dell laptop, so very different platforms with very different drivers.

Since rebooting fixes the problem, I'm assuming it's a software issue. Is there any way to solve this problem programatically, like by reloading a kernel module or otherwise triggering a reset of the touchpad driver?

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Nmath avatar
ng flag
Nmath
Very different hardware indeed. The only common denominator here is the operator. It might be something you're doing. When you set up these devices, did you need to do anything explicitly to get the touchpad to work. If so, describe what that was for each system. Are you sure you aren't activating a key combination that disables the touchpad? If I had to guess- that's what is happening.
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in flag
Cerin
No, the touchpad otherwise "just works" on both systems. And no, I'm not aware of any key combination that disables the touchpad. Although I do use Gnome's setting to disable the touchpad while typing. Maybe there's some bug that prevents that from re-enabling the touchpad?
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avatar Ubuntu
in flag
Cerin

With the help of this answer, I used lsmod to guess that the kernel module controlling my touchpad was bcm5974.

Then I tried:

sudo modprobe -r bcm5974
sudo modprobe bcm5974

and wouldn't you know, that fixed my buggy Macbook touchpad!

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Asclepius avatar
in flag
Asclepius
For me it was `hid_multitouch`.
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