Tap to click sticks on Ubuntu 10.4

[PhilV]

When I tap to click on the touchpad, the button (or link) wil stick pressed down until I move the mouse then it releases. When I use the touchpad button to click I dont see this happening.

Running VMware 3.1.1 and Ubuntu 10.4.

Macbook Pro late 2008

[aphotic]

I've also had this problem on my Macbook Unibody (Late 2008) in both Ubuntu 9.10 and 10.04 running on VMware Fusion 3.0 to 3.1.1 in Mac OS X 10.6.0 through to 10.6.4. I've tried many variations and fresh installs of Ubuntu, both 32bit and 64bit, as well as different installations of the VMware tools package.

I emailed VMware support when I first upgraded to version v3.0. But they never resolved the problem. The first response by support was "try reinstalling Ubuntu", I did this and then replied to the email to confirm that it didn't make a difference and an auto-responder email stated that if I wanted to follow this up I would need to call VMware by phone to "reopen this Service Request". I didn't want to have to explain it again to someone on the phone so I left it there.

The only solution I have is to run Xquartz (X11) on the Mac and then from the terminal, I enter "ssh -Y username@vmwareguest.local" to log into the vmware guest. I can then launch the linux app from the terminal and it runs in the native Mac X11 Server.

This is not an elegant solution, but it does the job.

[stenorman2001]

I can confirm that this issue exists when using Debian 5.0.5, Fedora 13 and OpenSolaris 2009.06.

My guess would be that a tap on the trackpad is treated differently in software than the trackpad click, such as using a mouse up event instead of mouse down.

[ShepardSiegel42]

I've seen this same issue with every RHEL5 64b WS VM guest we have made; so it is likely not a guest OS issue. It is annoying, and I wish there was a fix.

You can workaround the problem by disabling the "tap to click" option in the host Trackpad preferences; but this forces you to use a real mechanical click on the trackpad, and not a tap.

As I see it, when the desired "tap to click" option is enabled on the host OS; the guest OS requires not just a tap, but a small additional movement to send the click event to the guest OS. This seems like a stong clue.

Fusion team, is there any thing else we can provide so that you can hopefully recreate and fix this issue?

[dmolony]

I have this problem too, with the last three versions of ubuntu, and every version of VMWare for the last 18 months. It's not hard to recreate, it happens pretty much everywhere.

For example, click on the calendar (top right on the menu bar). Try not to swear as it refuses to do what you want for the first two or three attempts. Once the calendar appears, single tap on one of the arrows left or right of the month name. Sit back and watch the months go flying by, as the software thinks you are holding the mouse down.

Please fix this, it's driving me nuts.

[admin]

Fusion team, is there any thing else we can provide so that you can hopefully recreate and fix this issue?

I think we're good on information; I can follow dmolony's steps and reproduce it. I've filed PR 624946 about this.

Edit: I'm not seeing this with a Windows 7 guest, however. Everyone in the thread has been talking about Linux guests, right? Anyone seen this with other guests?

[ThomasWeiss]

As much as I love Fusion, today this annoying bug motivated me to try VirtualBox 4.0.0 (I'm running an Ubuntu 10.04.1 guest on a first generation MacBook Air with OS X 10.6.6 as host).  VirtualBox is a pain to work with: you have to read the instructions very carefully to figure out how to install the Guest Additions manually from a terminal window.  But, after having succeeding with that, tap-to-click worked as it should.  So, it looks like this behavior is a bug in Fusion's Guest Additions for Linux.

Please do not take this as an overarching endorsement of VirtualBox!  I have just started to work with it, and it is my expectation that overall it will not be as convenient as Fusion in re key mappings, etc.  I also have no idea how well it works with weird Mac hardware, like Magic Mouse.

So let's all just hope that VMWare's Fusion team fixes this bug soon. 🙂

Thomas Weiss

[ShepardSiegel42]

We all want it fixed. To be clear - it is not unique to Ubuntu guests. We see it as well with RHEL5, for example. It is really annoying. -Shep

[matthewls]

Given analogous problems with keyboard "stickiness" in Workstation and Fusion, it seems like it could be a general interrupt/buffer/polling problem. I hope it gets solved soon.

[AdrianRob]

I don't see any update to this -- has this been accepted as a bug requiring a fix by vmware?  I am personally looking forward to having a solution to this very irritating and productivity affecting issue.  Fingers crossed that it is soon....

[stadlmayer]

Is there any way to see what the status of PR 624946 is?  This occurs for me with Fedora 12.

This has been causing me to pull my hair out for the last 4 months.   I am replying to ensure that VMware still knows that there are a lot of us waiting for this fix.

This is frustrating enough that I am very close to looking into Parallels as an alternative.  Please fix this ASAP.

Thanks,

Kevin

[AdrianRob]

Here's a description of the issue as it persists in Ubuntu 10.10 in VMware Fusion v3.1.2 (332101) with Macbook Pro using the touchpad (note, I also have an iMac with the Apple Magic touchpad and can report the exact same problems)

1) Single-click gesture intermittently fails to action the click on finger-up leg of gesture (analogue to the left mouse button-up event).

2) A failed single-click gesture can be completed almost 100% of cases by simply "moving" the cursor with a drag gesture, even just a single-pixel.

3) Appears as if some mouse-capturing is going on but failing to get released on the single click which the moving gesture forces completion of over original single-click down mouse capture point.

4) Single-click ALWAYS appears to work with the final move-gesture.  I have never NOT had the click work, finally, by the simple movement gesture at the end of the completed tap.

5) Ubuntu 10.10 sees my MBP touchpad as a 'mouse' instead of a 'touchpad'.  Same applies for when using my iMac with the Magic touchpad which also sees this peripheral as a mouse and not a touchpad.  With this said I don't have boot to Linux option so have never set the touchpad up as an additional bluetooth peripheral directly accessible from a 100% Ubuntu session.

Hope this provides a little bit more color as to the nature of the issue.

Adrian

[AdrianRob]

For pedagogical purposes I decided to install the Apple Magic touchpad from my iMac into my Ubuntu 10.10 session on my Mackbook Pro (see above post).  When the touchpad is initially detected by VMware I explicitly opted to "Connect to Linux".  I then went through a very painful process by which the touchpad is paired, setup and ready to use with tap click functionality.

Key finding is that connecting an Apple Magic touchpad directly to the Ubuntu VM and installing as a direct input device DOES NOT cause the single-click issue to occur whatsoever.  Looks like the issue is isolated to the importing of the Apple MBP touchpad as a 'mouse device' which i noticed it is in contrast to the Apple Magic touchpad which is seen as the in-built mouse device (mouse0).

With this said I am now using my Apple Magic touchpad instead of my trackpad on my MBP and my productivity feels like it has returned to near normal levels (i still prefer the in-built trackpad of the MBP so wish to return to this solution ASAP).

Not sure if this helps the guys at vmware somewhat, hopefully so.

Adrian

[stadlmayer]

Does explicit "Connect to Linux" prevent the use of the Magic Trackpad for regular OS X operation?  Will I need to use the built-in trackpad or another mouse for simultaneous OS X usage?  If this is the case, I'm not sure that I want to bother.

I just want to know what the consequences are, before I go your route.

I'm disappointed that there has been no response from the VMware Team regarding my previous question, or with any update as to the status of this issue.

[AdrianRob]

Sadly, connect to Linux does prevent Bluetooth registration with Mac host.  Its a great question and I wish the answer was different as I agree it is not really a solution at all...i was more looking at it personally as vmware troubleshooting assistance but i had strangely started to get used to the dual-trackpad solution which speaks more for the pain of the issue than it does the elegance of the 'solution'.  And just to compete the circle, registration of the Apple touchpad with the host causes it to get imported as the mouse device into the Ubuntu VM and is subject to the same mouse click issues as the inbuilt trackpad. 😛

@vmware: where should i send my invoice to? 🙂

Adrian

[AdrianRob]

Just another quick note that I wanted to do further experimentation so installed same Ubuntu into Parallels and it works absolutely fine, AND to my great but positive surprise I found that the Gnome desktop effects were working allowing me to use the compositor and have my preferred desktop environment so looks like I'll be using that until this gets fixed and vmware provide the necessary video drivers or whatever is needed so the richer user environment can be configured and used (sorry vmware ).  Haven't played with Ps before and still need to do more performance testing against the baseline fusion vm settings but i'm pretty happy to find i have a solution to my annoying single-tap sticking issue and now have a far more immersive and richer Ubuntu experience.

Adi

[dogweather]

I found a workaround: run in Unity mode. This works for me with OS X 10.6.7, and Ubuntu 11.

[stadlmayer]

Confirmed with my Fedora 12 based system.  Thanks for the tip, didn't consider using Unity for Linux-based systems.  Once less source of frustration.