Waveblazer demo on Kogan Agora 7″ Tablet

Turbofly 3D demo on Kogan Agora 7″ tablet

Raging Thunder 2 demo on Kogan Agora 7″ Tablet

Yes – it has been a while between posts! My kogan netbook has been serving the purpose it was intended for, meaning I haven’t come across anything I have felt I need to share in this blog. Upgrading ubuntu along the way has been happy and cheery with no issues, so no need to blog…

But there have been three or four comments over the months regarding the touchpad not working with newer versions of ubuntu. Whilst ubuntu 9.10 came with grub 2 by default, upgrading from 9.04 (grub 1.5) to 9.10 and then up to 10.04 meant grub stayed at 1.5, so even though I am running 10.04, I am still on grub 1.5, and the “i8042_nomux” fix seems to still work.

When 9.10 was released, Tom provided this blog with a solution for making the kogan netbook’s touchpad work in 9.10. I had figured this would work for 10.04 too, so to be sure, I think its time to upgrade my kogan netbook to 10.04, just to make sure the touchpad still works.

Upgrading to grub 2 is straight forward using apt-get:

sudo apt-get install grub2

During the upgrade I was asked if i wanted to chainload grub 2 from my existing grub legacy setup. It was highly recommended, so I went with it. It also asked me if I wanted to keep the “i8042_nomux” parameter, which I also agreed to do – I want my touchpad!

Grub 2 was installed, and after a reboot all was still well with the touchpad. However, because I agreed to chainload grub 2, grub 1.5 is still installed on my Master Boot Record (MBR) – not grub 2. This can be easily rectified with the following command:

sudo upgrade-from-grub-legacy

During this grub upgrade, I was asked if I wanted to keep my locally modified version of /etc/default/grub, and figuring this was modified for the “i8042_nomux” parameter, I agreed. I then had to choose where to install grub too, and I chose /dev/sda.

After a quick reboot, using grub 2 to boot, my touchpad still worked. success!! I now know that under ubuntu 10.04 with grub2, the touchpad on the kogan netbook works.

Now to help the people who can’t get the touchpad working. Short of doing a fresh install with 10.04 on my machine to try and replicate the issue (I don’t have the time, sorry), I thought I would try and work out what makes the touchpad work under grub 2.

Based on Tom’s info, i checked out my grub config:

sudo gedit /etc/default/grub

And it looks like:

# If you change this file, run 'update-grub' afterwards to update
# /boot/grub/grub.cfg.

GRUB_DEFAULT=0
GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT=0
GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT_QUIET=true
GRUB_TIMEOUT=3
GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR=`lsb_release -i -s 2> /dev/null || echo Debian`
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="i8042.nomux"

# Uncomment to disable graphical terminal (grub-pc only)
#GRUB_TERMINAL=console

# The resolution used on graphical terminal
# note that you can use only modes which your graphic card supports via VBE
# you can see them in real GRUB with the command `vbeinfo'
#GRUB_GFXMODE=640x480

# Uncomment if you don't want GRUB to pass "root=UUID=xxx" parameter to Linux
#GRUB_DISABLE_LINUX_UUID=true

# Uncomment to disable generation of recovery mode menu entries
#GRUB_DISABLE_LINUX_RECOVERY="true"

# Uncomment to get a beep at grub start
#GRUB_INIT_TUNE="480 440 1"

I believe the important part is this line:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="i8042.nomux"

So I decided to comment the line out by adding a “#” to the front, run “sudo update-grub” to update my grub config and rebooted. When ubuntu came back, my touchpad was fixed in the center of the screen – stuck and broken. Reversing what I had just done (remove the “#”, run “sudo update-grub”, reboot) and the touchpad was back in motion.

If your kogan agora’s touchpad is not working, I have the following advice to offer. Edit your grub config:

sudo gedit /etc/default/grub

and type the following line – I say type because if you copy and paste, the wrong quotes may be used:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="i8042.nomux"

If there any other occurences of i8042.nomux remove them (just i8042.nomux) and then update your grub config:

sudo update-grub

Now reboot, and fingers crossed your touchpad will dance with your finger. If this fails, please comment below with your specifics (i.e fresh ubuntu 10.04 install, upgraded from grub 1.5, upgraded from 9.10, etc) and I will try and help.

Ubuntu now uses grub 2 as the default boot loader, and this means a change in the instructions for making the kogan agora touchpad function under ubuntu.

After putting out a call for assistance on this, Tom has come through with the goods! In order to get the agora’s touchpad working with grub 2, follow these instructions

In a terminal:

sudo gedit /etc/default/grub

Find the line GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=”quiet splash” and just after it add a new line and type in (make sure you type to avoid the wrong quote symbol copying and pasting) the following line:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=”i8042.nomux”

and then update grub and reboot:

sudo update-grub

I have tested this myself and it works a treat. Thanks Tom!

References: http://agoranetbook.kayno.net/2009/08/02/touchpad-update-ensuring-i8042-nomux-is-not-removed-when-your-kernel-is-updated/comment-page-1/#comment-13165

sudo update-manager -d

This will kick off the update manager, and provide you with a single button to upgrade to version 9.10. After 30 minutes or so, you should be rebooting into a new kernel, and the new ubuntu.

The usual suspects that needed attention in the past (read: the touchpad and wireless networking) were both still working, and had obviously remained configured from the previous version.

Whilst I say “working”, the wireless adapter is connecting to my home wireless access point however the signal is still low and not picking up neighbouring APs.

There has been some improvements though. The physical wifi button is no longer a “glorified light switch“, as it was so well put by Andrew. Pressing the button results in the card shutting off.

The second welcome surprise is the return of “resume from suspend”. After changing the wifi card recently myself and others discovered the netbook would not resume from suspend. This now appears to have resolved itself.

The netbook remix interface is looking much fresher, as you can see in the screenshots attached below.

The only qualm I have so far with karmic and the netbook remix itself is that I cannot seem to locate the shutdown icon in the menus or interface. This may be because I upgraded from 9.04, but as it is beta I will wait and see, and use the physical netbook power button to bring up the shutdown options.

Another note to add – GRUB2 and EXT4, whilst being the new defaults in ubuntu 9.10, are not automatically upgraded:

ext4 by default

The new “ext4″ filesystem is used by default for new installations with Ubuntu 9.10 Beta; of course, other filesystems are still available via the manual partitioner. Existing filesystems will not be upgraded.

GRUB 2 by default

GRUB 2 is the default boot loader for new installations with Ubuntu 9.10 Beta, replacing the previous GRUB “Legacy” boot loader. Existing systems will not be upgraded to GRUB 2 at this time, as automatically reinstalling the boot loader is an inherently risky operation.

A comment in a previous blog entry on this site asks how to configure the touchpad in GRUB2. I am yet to investigate this, however is anyone has any info, please post below.

References

• http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/karmic/beta

agora touchpad

If you followed the post on this site where I explained how to enable the touchpad on your kogan agora netbook (http://agoranetbook.kayno.net/2009/04/25/oh-my-touchpad-doesnt-work/), you (as well as Josh) have probably found that every time the linux kernel is updated, your touchpad stops working until you add the i8042.nomux option back to your grub menu.lst file.

I have however found a way to solve this, and have just updated my netbook with Ubuntu Netbook Remix to the latest kernel (2.6.28-14) without losing my touchpad. Here is what you need to do:

In your terminal:

sudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst

First, remove all instances of i8042.nomux that you have previously added. Now you need to find the line where the kernel options are set – “# kopt=…”. Mine looked something like this:

# kopt=root=UUID=4f3de232-2543-4359-43e2-a2ea36ef4043 ro

And add i8042.nomux to the end of line:

# kopt=root=UUID=4f3de232-2543-4359-43e2-a2ea36ef4043 ro i8042.nomux

Whilst it might be tempting to remove the # from the beginning of the line, don’t – it clearly states in menu.lst: “DO NOT UNCOMMENT THEM, Just edit them to your needs”.

Save and close menu.lst, and finally you need to run the update-grub command. This will take the kernel options (including i8042.nomux) and add them to all the kernel boot lines:

sudo update-grub
Searching for GRUB installation directory ... found: /boot/grub
Searching for default file ... found: /boot/grub/default
Testing for an existing GRUB menu.lst file ... found: /boot/grub/menu.lst
Searching for splash image ... none found, skipping ...
Found kernel: /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.28-14-generic
Found kernel: /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.28-13-generic
Found kernel: /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.28-11-generic
Found kernel: /boot/memtest86+.bin
Updating /boot/grub/menu.lst ... done

If you check /boot/grub/menu.lst now, you will see that i8042.nomux is back as a boot option for each kernel, however it still remains as a default kernel option (on the “# kopt” line). As it is a default kernel option, every time you update your kernel, the option will be added to the boot options for the new kernel.

Now your touchpad should always respond to your finger tips – even after a kernel update!

A quick google later, and reveals an article that seems to be the holy grail of multitouch for Ubuntu. The title says it all:

Multi touch for any, all synaptics touchpad

“Any, all” – that’s me! But lets double check. According to what my kernel reports, my agora is equipped with a Synaptics touchpad:

Synaptics Touchpad, model: 1, fw: 6.5, id: 0x25c0b1, caps: 0xa04711/0xa00000
input: SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad as /devices/platform/i8042/serio1/input/input9

So far so good. Before launching into adding more configuration options for HAL, I caught the last part of the article – “Update: Diagnosing your touchpad for multi-finger-sensing-capability”. Using the synclient command, you can query the touchpad to see if it will support multitouch.

In a nutshell, synclient will show you lots of data including your finger’s position on the pad, the ‘width’ of your finger, the amount of ‘pressure’ being applied, and also the number of fingers touching the pad. The man page for synclient tells us that column ‘f‘ is for:

The number of fingers currently touching the touchpad. Note that only some touchpads can report more than one finger. Generally, synaptics touchpads can, but ALPS touchpads can’t.

Now to see if there is any proof in the pudding (or fingers in the pie… errr… on the touchpad):

$ synclient -m500
time x y z f w l r u d m multi gl gm gr gdx gdy
0.000 0001 5855 000 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 00000000 0 0 0 0 0
3.502 2127 3540 080 1 4 0 0 0 0 0 00000000 0 0 0 0 0
4.002 2087 3556 084 1 4 0 0 0 0 0 00000000 0 0 0 0 0
4.502 2058 3854 084 1 4 0 0 0 0 0 00000000 0 0 0 0 0
5.003 2048 3861 084 1 4 0 0 0 0 0 00000000 0 0 0 0 0
5.503 2040 3865 084 1 4 0 0 0 0 0 00000000 0 0 0 0 0

This is where it all comes undone. The finger column, ‘f‘ contains 1, despite the fact that I had multiple fingers on the touchpad, and tried different locations, simultaneous touching with multiple fingers and progressively adding more fingers.

So to answer the original question – does the touchpad on the kogan agora support multitouch? No. Sorry. Not under UNR anyway.

You can however enable vertical and horizontal scrolling using the edges of the touchpad, and right clicking by tapping the top right corner – all described in previous posts on this site!

I had some feedback from at least two readers who could not enable SHMConfig, and when they tried to use gsynaptics or syndaemon, they were met with the error “You have to set ‘SHMConfig’ ‘true’ in xorg.conf or XF86Config“. The instructions provided in the post to enable SHMConfig using the /etc/hal/fdi/policy/shmconfig.fdi method did not appear to be working.

After a lot of troubleshooting work with Travis, we were able to determine why this was occuring, and how to resolve it.

Firstly, and briefly, the why. The HAL daemon (hald) keeps a cache in /var/cache/hald/fdi-cache. For some reason, hald was using this cache file, and not picking up the newly created shmconfig.fdi file.

Now the important part – how to resolve it! This is easy, you just need to remove the cache:

sudo rm /var/cache/hald/fdi-cache

Provided you have created the shmconfig.fdi file as described in the gsynaptics post, reboot your machine, and you should be able to load gsynaptics and setup syndaemon without being told SHMConfig needs to be set to true. The fdi-cache file will be recreated when you reboot, and you shouldn’t have any more problems.

A big thanks to Travis for helping to troubleshoot this one!

I used unetbootin to create a bootable USB drive, and it booted to an Ubuntu/gOS boot menu fine. I didn’t want to overwrite my UNR install, so I chose to boot ‘live’ – i.e. run gOS from the USB drive, and not change my hard drive in any way.

The kogan spash screen appeared and eventually it booted to the ‘koganised’ gOS desktop, which only lasted a day the last time it was installed on my agora! What I didn’t have, semi-unexpectedly, was a functioning touchpad.

Unless the fixgOS2.bat or makeboot.bat files described in the manual do something other than copy the gOS iso to the USB drive and make it bootable (I couldn’t use the method described in the agora’s manual, as I do not have windows installed), than I don’t think the factory restore instructions will help you to easily restore the kogan to its original out-of-the-box self.

I would love to be proved wrong though, and would love it if someone could follow the instructions on page 36 of the manual, create a USB drive with the kogan gOS image boot live to gOS (this will not erase any data currently on your agora’s hard disk) and see if the touchpad works. Any takers? You may be the first to crack the touchpad mystery of the kogan agora!

Neerav Bhatt also mentioned that he was having this problem, and I flashed back to all my google searching when I was trying to enable the touchpad in Ubuntu Netbook Remix. I came across some information on how to disable the touchpad, which was completely the opposite to what I was trying to achieve. Flash forward to today, and it now seems pretty useful!

I have dug up that information, and now I have my touchpad disabled whilst I type. When I stop typing, 1 second after the last key press, the touchpad is re-enabled.

To achieve this I used a program called ‘syndaemon’ which is, according to it’s manual page, “a program that monitors keyboard activity and disables the touchpad when the keyboard is being used”.

You will need to enable SHMConfig for syndaemon to work though. I have documented how to do this in an earlier post describing how to install and use gsynaptics.

To enable syndaemon, in a terminal enter:

syndaemon -i 1 -k -d

The -i 1 argument tells syndaemon to wait 1 second to re-enable the touchpad after typing (you can adjust this if you need more time). The -k will mean syndaemon does not disable the touchpad if modifier keys are being pressed, eg ctrl. Finally, -d will make syndaemon run in daemon mode – in the background.

Your touchpad should now be disabled as you type. This command will need to be issued whenever your operating system restarts, so to save yourself the hassle, in Ubuntu you can add it to your Startup Applications. From the Preferences menu, click Startup Applications, and then click “Add”. Enter “Disable touchpad while typing” for the name, the syndaemon command from above for the command, and click “Add”. Now you can click “Close” and you are done. Enjoy!

References: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=271052

To do this, open a terminal and enter:

sudo gedit /etc/hal/fdi/policy/shmconfig.fdi

and in the file that opens, place the following text:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<deviceinfo version="0.2">
  <device>
    <match key="input.x11_driver" string="synaptics">
      <merge key="input.x11_options.SHMConfig" type="string">True</merge>
    </match>
  </device>
</deviceinfo>


Now you can install gsynaptics:

sudo apt-get install gsynaptics

The final step is to reboot, so that SHMConfig is enabled. Once rebooted, you will have a new item in your Preference menu, “Touchpad” (which is gsyanptics).

References: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SynapticsTouchpad