[SOLVED] Elantech touch pad detected as generic ps/2 mouse.

[foxcob]

Background:
I recently got a new laptop (Asus N56VM) that features an Elantech touch pad. After spending 2 days straight figuring out how to get mint 13 cinnamon installed on a UEFI system, this is my last real hurdle (besides gettiing grub2 to successfully boot UEFI Windows 7). The touch pad works as a mouse, however, none of the more advanced features work (multi-touch, etc). I have tried everything I have found here and on Ubuntu's forums. I ended up compiling the latest stable kernel from kernel.org just to get my backlit keyboard and hotkeys to work. I needed the more recent kernel in order to install a new asus-wmi kernel module. I built new kernel using the config that came with the 3.2-generic kernel in /boot.

Does anyone have any tips for getting my touchpad use the elantech driver? I have found no evidence that the system recognizes it as any kind of touchpad. I have checked syslog, xinput list, /proc/bus/input/devices/. I don't know what to try next. I can provide any additional information needed.

[Update]
So I rebuilt the kernel using:

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make oldconfig
make prepare
fakeroot make-kpkg --initrd --append-to-version=.20120906 kernel_image kernel_headers

Then installed both the new image and headers. Upon rebooting, I enabled debug output by appending debug to my kernel options in grub. Still no go with the elantech mouse detection, i.e. still generic ps/2 mouse. I wanted to try enabling debug output in the mouse driver to see if I could find anything out about why the elantech driver thought this wasn't a touchpad. I made sure I could load the kernel module manually by running:

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sudo rmmod psmouse

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sudo insmod ./psmouse.ko

in my {kernel source}/drivers/input/mouse directory

Surprisingly upon checking "xinput list", it now loaded as an Elantech mouse driver. Seems odd, so I remove it again and load the module from the /lib/modules location using:

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sudo modprobe psmouse

Hmm back to generic ps/2 mouse. I can do this over and over. Some reason using modprobe is effecting device detection. Just to be sure I was using the same module, I ran "

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sudo insmod /lib/modules/3.5.0.20120906/kernel/drivers/input/mouse/psmouse.ko

" and got the Elantech pad working.

Any ideas as to what could be causing this?

[foxcob]

I found my own solution. Unfortunately, I don't know what the original problem was, but I know what was keeping the module from working now. When using the modprobe command, the options.conf file in /etc/modprobe.d/ is checked. What I found was in following instructions on another forum previously, I had added the line "options psmouse proto=imps". After poking around at the modules public parameters, I noticed that when I loaded the module using modprobe, I was getting an option of imps for proto, but when I used insmod, the proto parameter was auto. When I removed the option from options.conf, everything worked as I wanted. I'm guessing that the original problem was solved when I upgraded my kernel to the latest and installed the new asus_wmi. I think the new wmi provided the necessary info for the elantech to be detected. Just a hunch since nothing else changed.

Hopefully someone else can find this useful. Let me tell you, this wasn't the typical live-disk to up and running experience I've been used to.

[citro87]

I'm registering just to say thank you. I had the same problem and I was looking for a solution for a lot of time.. Nice job!