Windows start jumping back and forth on laptop

[turboscrew]

Has anyone else had this problem?

Sometimes when I'm surfing in the web with Firefox and I click something with the mouse, the window starts jumping back and forth.
I think that happens if my wrist touches something (not sure what) in the touchpad when I click with mouse.
And when that happens, the window in all applications jump back and forth when the mouse cursor is within the window of the application.
So that is not application specific, but probably a Cinnamon problem.

The jumping back and forth pauses while I press the touchpad and continues when I lift my finger off the touchpad.

[Cosmo.]

What is your version of Mint and what is the desktop environment? If you don't know open a terminal and enter:

Code: Select all

inxi -Sz

Paste the output here.

Disable the touchpad completely. Still the same?

[turboscrew]

Mint 17.3, and as I mentioned, Cinnamon.

jaa@T400 ~ $ inxi -Sz
System: Host: T400 Kernel: 3.19.0-32-generic x86_64 (64 bit)
Desktop: Cinnamon 2.8.8 Distro: Linux Mint 17.3 Rosa

[turboscrew]

This is what it looks like. (Aha, you can't attach .mp4-files.)
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ym1rqb75h0jhc ... 6.mp4?dl=0

I don't know where to look for the reason.

[turboscrew]

Does anyone have suggestions about logs to check or things to try to figure out what happened?
Dmesg didn't show anything suspicious, and I didn't find anything weird in the Xorg.0.log either.

Oh, and only window the contents of which doesn't fit fully, starts jumping (or actually scrolling) randomly back and forth.

[Cosmo.]

From your last sentence I understand, that the problem is not jumping of Windows (the complete video inclusive the background is jumping and hard to watch), but that autoscroll behavior.

Boot your live system. Does the problem appear there in the same way?

[turboscrew]

From your last sentence I understand, that the problem is not jumping of Windows (the complete video inclusive the background is jumping and hard to watch), but that autoscroll behavior.

Boot your live system. Does the problem appear there in the same way?

Yes, the problem is the random fast back and forth scrolling, like in the linked video clip. And only when the mouse cursor is on it.

My system has been running nicely for almost a year (I think Feb. 25th on). The problem seems to have appeared in the past two months or so.
Also, I don't really know what triggers the problem, so I can't reproduce it at will. It doesn't happen every day, but it can happen
a couple of times in the same day. It usually starts when I'm writing something somewhere - typically in FB (= when I'm not looking ).

Should I still run Mint from the live-DVD for a week or so if the problem doesn't show earlier?

[Cosmo.]

I had the (mis-) understanding, that the problem comes up more often. If this is so seldom, it would most likely be a pain to run for a week the live system. On the other hand I have no better idea, how to investigate in this issue.

My suspicion is the touchpad. As you still use the original kernel, but the problem did not arise in many months, we can exclude a kernel problem. If my suspicion should be right, the failure would also exist in the live system. Or the other way round: If the failure would be there in the live system it would very strongly point to the hardware, because nothing else would have been changed since you installed Mint. Hardware can get defective, the live system (as long as the media works) cannot.

[turboscrew]

The HW is Lenovo ThinkPad T400.
And I also suspect the touchpad, because the scrolling stops if I press the touchpad with a finger - for as long as I keep my finger on the pad.

It's just that the the only way to stop the scrolling is to reboot (or maybe restart X, but equally lengthy process).
It's irritating if you are writing a comment on FB or LinkedIn and you have several other windows open.

I'll try with the live-DVD that I used for installation. Too bad I don't have all my installed stuff and browser bookmarks available - at least easily.

[Cosmo.]

At least regarding your bookmarks there is an easy solution (but you have to repeat it every time you boot the live system): Firefox must be closed. Open your file manager with the home of the live system user (this is usually the folder, which gets displayed by default). Delete the folder .mozilla. Note, that you have to make hidden files visible for that (press ctrl-h). Now copy the complete folder .mozilla from your hard drive to this place. When you start FF you have your FF-profile with all bookmarks, settings, extensions, history and so on as you left it the last time on the hard drive.

[turboscrew]

Now running on Live-DVD.

[turboscrew]

It looks like I have to give up live-DVD testing. I need stuff that I installed.
I wonder if the Cinnamon debugger (Melange) could help instead?

[turboscrew]

On the installed system now, and it happened again.

Any suggestions where to look or what to do?
I tried to look at Cinnamon code, but it was pretty hopeless to figure out how to use Melange to look into Cinnamon.
Also I guess the problem could be in GTK as well.

Checked that there is no "ghost" button presses using keyboard tester ( http://www.keyboardtester.com/tester.html ), but nothing.
Maybe having Firefox and something else. like Eclipse or NetBeans open at the same time could have something to do with it?

[Cosmo.]

As far as I understand, the problem was not reproducible in the live system.

Create a fresh new user account. Does it appear there?

[turboscrew]

Hard to say about the live system. Couldn't use that too long.

I'll try another new user account. Thanks.

[turboscrew]

Now using a newly created account.

[turboscrew]

The problem hit.

Had to reboot. Writing with a finger on the touchpad was hard, and it looked like also the focus shifted around without a finger on the pad.
The only program that I used during the new account test was Firefox (49.0.2 for Linux Mint).

(I think) I didn't reboot when I switched to the new account. I just logged out and in on the new account.

[turboscrew]

The problem hit again.
It's weird that the wild scrolling stops if I put my finger on the touchpad. As if the touchpad started sending random events when idle.

[turboscrew]

Gets even more weird: It hit again. This time I pressed the touchpad and moved my finger around a bit. Then the scrolling stopprd, but the mouse cursor started moving up and down as fast as it used to scroll. Played a bit with the touchpad and mouse, and this time IT STOPPED, and ewerything started working as normal. When it plays games (scrolling or mouse cursor), the touchpad works fine as long as the touchpad is touched.

Touchpad driver?

Now I'm trying with touchpad disabled.

[turboscrew]

Looks like disabling the touchpad altogether helped. At least the problem hasn't appeared since.

It would be nice, though, to sometimes be able to use the touchpad too.
Suggestions for further investigations?