Touchpad jumps

[bugaevc]

This might or might not be the same as https://github.com/linux-surface/linux-surface/issues/1191

Since recently (I estimate 1 to 3 weeks ago — perhaps a bad kernel update?), touchpad started behaving erratically; it worked great before. Sometimes, typically soon after connecting the Type Cover, it works fine, although maybe a tiny bit slower (as in higher latency) than before, also sometimes it has issues registering taps (and I have to press down hard until it "clicks"). But then after some time, the cursor starts jumping around the screen when I move my finger on the touchpad. Eventually, it stops responding to touchpad at all.

This is not related to pressure sensitivity, as it was working perfectly before. This can happen immediately after boot, so it's not related to suspending / hibernation either.

I'm disconnecting and re-connecting the Type Cover to work around this, which makes the overall experience somewhat usable. Please tell me what I could do to help you investigate and debug this.

Environment

• Hardware model: Surface Pro 6
• Kernel version: Linux surface-pro-6 6.5.8-1.surface.fc39.x86_64 #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Sun Oct 22 14:41:02 UTC 2023 x86_64 GNU/Linux
• Distribution: Fedora 39

dmesg output

The log shows me unplugging and re-plugging my Type Cover keyboard several times.

(Also OMG, I just noticed those mwifiex crashes! But that looks unrelated)

There are also these complaints from libinput in the journal:

17:31:45 surface-pro-6 gnome-shell[2418]: libinput error: event5  - Microsoft Surface Type Cover Touchpad: kernel bug: Touch jump detected and discarded.
17:31:45 surface-pro-6 gnome-shell[2418]: See https://wayland.freedesktop.org/libinput/doc/1.24.0/touchpad-jumping-cursors.html for details
17:32:47 surface-pro-6 gnome-shell[2418]: libinput error: event5  - Microsoft Surface Type Cover Touchpad: kernel bug: Touch jump detected and discarded.
17:32:47 surface-pro-6 gnome-shell[2418]: See https://wayland.freedesktop.org/libinput/doc/1.24.0/touchpad-jumping-cursors.html for details
17:33:03 surface-pro-6 gnome-shell[2418]: libinput error: event5  - Microsoft Surface Type Cover Touchpad: kernel bug: Touch jump detected and discarded.
17:33:03 surface-pro-6 gnome-shell[2418]: See https://wayland.freedesktop.org/libinput/doc/1.24.0/touchpad-jumping-cursors.html for details
17:33:03 surface-pro-6 gnome-shell[2418]: libinput error: event5  - Microsoft Surface Type Cover Touchpad: kernel bug: Touch jump detected and discarded.
17:33:03 surface-pro-6 gnome-shell[2418]: See https://wayland.freedesktop.org/libinput/doc/1.24.0/touchpad-jumping-cursors.html for details

[bugaevc]

Booted 6.5.5-2 from Wed Oct 4, the issue is still happening there, so maybe it wasn't a kernel update.

[dev-uhuru]

Hi there, for whatever it's worth, I may have hit a related issue. I have the kernel 6.6.8-100.fc38.x86_64, Fedora 38 and have noticed, just recently (so something like 5-6 months after a fresh install) that my touchpad would bug, eg.:

• Using one tap finger to highlight a position and a second finger to drag selection would be extremely slow
• Gesture with gnome shell would stop working (3 finger gesture to change desktop)
• 3 finger gestures when on a browser would go to previous / next page, eg. 3 finger gesture would act as 2 finger So all in all, it's almost as if one finger is "discarded". Today is the 2nd time it happens and I went back to the logs which I didn't do the first time around since a reboot fixed it. I have something similar to you:

13:41:09 hostname gnome-shell[2634]: libinput error: event6  - VEN_04F3:00 04F3:3242 Touchpad: WARNING: log rate limit exceeded (5 msgs per 24h). Discarding future messages.
13:43:54 hostname gnome-shell[145513]: libinput error: event6  - VEN_04F3:00 04F3:3242 Touchpad: kernel bug: Touch jump detected and discarded.
13:43:54 hostname gnome-shell[145513]: See https://wayland.freedesktop.org/libinput/doc/1.23.0/touchpad-jumping-cursors.html for details
13:44:23 hostname gnome-shell[145513]: libinput error: event6  - VEN_04F3:00 04F3:3242 Touchpad: kernel bug: Touch jump detected and discarded.
13:44:23 hostname gnome-shell[145513]: See https://wayland.freedesktop.org/libinput/doc/1.23.0/touchpad-jumping-cursors.html for details

Any luck in your investigations?

[bugaevc]

Nope :disappointed: and no response from the maintainers, either.

[nicheosala]

Similar problem. Output of sudo journalctl -p 3 -b:

gen 16 15:16:24 arch kwin_wayland[908]: kwin_libinput: Libinput: event7  - Microsoft Surface 045E:09AF Touchpad: kernel bug: Touch jump detected and discarded.
                                        See https://wayland.freedesktop.org/libinput/doc/1.25.0/touchpad-jumping-cursors.html for details
gen 16 15:16:24 arch kwin_wayland[908]: kwin_libinput: Libinput: event7  - Microsoft Surface 045E:09AF Touchpad: kernel bug: Touch jump detected and discarded.
                                        See https://wayland.freedesktop.org/libinput/doc/1.25.0/touchpad-jumping-cursors.html for details
gen 16 15:18:12 arch kwin_wayland[908]: kwin_libinput: Libinput: event7  - Microsoft Surface 045E:09AF Touchpad: kernel bug: Touch jump detected and discarded.
                                        See https://wayland.freedesktop.org/libinput/doc/1.25.0/touchpad-jumping-cursors.html for details
gen 16 15:18:41 arch kwin_wayland[908]: kwin_libinput: Libinput: event7  - Microsoft Surface 045E:09AF Touchpad: kernel bug: Touch jump detected and discarded.
                                        See https://wayland.freedesktop.org/libinput/doc/1.25.0/touchpad-jumping-cursors.html for details
gen 16 15:19:20 arch kwin_wayland[908]: kwin_libinput: Libinput: event7  - Microsoft Surface 045E:09AF Touchpad: kernel bug: Touch jump detected and discarded.
                                        See https://wayland.freedesktop.org/libinput/doc/1.25.0/touchpad-jumping-cursors.html for details
gen 16 15:19:20 arch kwin_wayland[908]: kwin_libinput: Libinput: event7  - Microsoft Surface 045E:09AF Touchpad: WARNING: log rate limit exceeded (5 msgs per 24h). Discarding future messages.

Environment

• Hardware model: Surface Pro 8
• Kernel version: Linux arch 6.6.10-arch1-1-surface #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Sat, 13 Jan 2024 00:20:37 +0000 x86_64 GNU/Linux
• Distribution: Arch Linux (KDE)

[ResRipper]

The same thing happened to me the next day after I installed the system and linux-surface kernel. Reconnect the cover will get the touchpad working for about a second.

kwin_wayland[645]: kwin_libinput: Libinput: event5  - Microsoft Surface Type Cover Touchpad: kernel bug: Touch jump detected and discarded.
                                            See https://wayland.freedesktop.org/libinput/doc/1.25.0/touchpad-jumping-cursors.html for details
kwin_wayland[645]: kwin_libinput: Libinput: event5  - Microsoft Surface Type Cover Touchpad: kernel bug: Touch jump detected and discarded.
                                            See https://wayland.freedesktop.org/libinput/doc/1.25.0/touchpad-jumping-cursors.html for details
kwin_wayland[645]: kwin_libinput: Libinput: event5  - Microsoft Surface Type Cover Touchpad: kernel bug: Touch jump detected and discarded.
                                            See https://wayland.freedesktop.org/libinput/doc/1.25.0/touchpad-jumping-cursors.html for details
kwin_wayland[645]: kwin_libinput: Libinput: event5  - Microsoft Surface Type Cover Touchpad: kernel bug: Touch jump detected and discarded.
                                            See https://wayland.freedesktop.org/libinput/doc/1.25.0/touchpad-jumping-cursors.html for details
kwin_wayland[645]: kwin_libinput: Libinput: event5  - Microsoft Surface Type Cover Touchpad: kernel bug: Touch jump detected and discarded.
                                            See https://wayland.freedesktop.org/libinput/doc/1.25.0/touchpad-jumping-cursors.html for details
kwin_wayland[645]: kwin_libinput: Libinput: event5  - Microsoft Surface Type Cover Touchpad: WARNING: log rate limit exceeded (5 msgs per 24h). Discarding future messages.

Environment

• Hardware model: Surface Pro 5
• Kernel version: 6.8.6-arch1-1-surface #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Tue, 16 Apr 2024 11:30:09 +0000 x86_64 GNU/Linux
• Distribution: Manjaro (KDE)

[ResRipper]

I also found that the touch screen will occasionally stop responding, unsure if they are related.

[bugaevc]

So, for what it's worth, I asked @StollD about this on Matrix, and then did some experimentation myself. Turns out:

• Use can use sudo evtest to watch the touchpad events coming from the kernel; these are the same events that the Wayland compositor (GNOME Shell in my case) sees.
• The kernel's driver (generic HID) isn't doing any smart processing on this data either, it receives the touchpad events over USB in one format, converts them to another, and passes them on.
• The erratic behavior is perfectly visible in evtest output:
  • when my on-screen cursor doesn't react to me touching the touchpad, there are no new events in evtest either;
  • when the on-screen cursor jumps, there are spurious events in evtest output that don't correspond to me actually moving my finger.
• The same erratic behavior actually reproduces under Windows, meaning Linux, GNOME, and linux-surface have nothing to do with it, and this is just what the touchpad hardware sends.
  • Once I dropped "Linux" from my search queries, it turned out lots of people have this issue with their Surface on Windows indeed!
• Surface Pro 6's touchpad is a standard USB device, without a separate and updateable firmware.
  • I have last upgraded my Surface (UEFI?) firmware (not on purpose — I just booted into Windows...) on Sep 29 2023, which is about a month prior to me filing this issue, and would explain it.
  • However, I then hit #1162, which I solved at the time by downgrading the firmware back to the older 238.167.768.0 version, and then proceeded to run into this issue with that older firmware. So this couldn't have been caused by a firmware update — and on top of that, the touchpad doesn't have updateable firmware in the first place, see above.
• Among the many discussions about touchpad jumps outside of linux-surface context, there have been suggestions that this might be caused by something as simple as electrical interference, and suggestions that it might go away when the charger is unplugged. And indeed, I can confirm that this does not seem to happen for me when the charger is unplugged.
  • My original Surface charger stopped working on Oct 13th 2023, and I had to urgently buy a new one. This fits the timing (I said "I estimate 1 to 3 weeks ago" on Oct 27th) very well!

[ResRipper]

Among the many discussions about touchpad jumps outside of linux-surface context, there have been suggestions that this might be caused by something as simple as electrical interference, and suggestions that it might go away when the charger is unplugged.

This is exactly what happened to me. When the problem occurred, I was using the power outlet in my local library. I then went out to buy a flash drive (which cost me twice the online price) to reinstall the OS, and while downloading the ISO in a different location, the problem disappeared. Now back in the library, I can confirm that this is the cause of both the touchpad and touchscreen issues. Now I just have to accept that I spent twice on a flash drive I will never need again.