Solved XPS13 Touchpad

I have been trying to rebuild a Haswell based Dell XPS13 laptop, to help test the new Intel graphics drivers. Funnily enough the graphics seems to work beautifully, but the touchpad does not work. I am hope someone here has some advice on getting it to work?

Code:
$ usbconfig
ugen0.2: <Synaptics Large Touch Screen SYNAPTICS> at usbus0, cfg=0 md=HOST spd=FULL (12Mbps) pwr=ON (144mA)
ugen1.2: <product 0x8000 vendor 0x8087> at usbus1, cfg=0 md=HOST spd=HIGH (480Mbps) pwr=SAVE (0mA)

I can turn ugen1.2 on using:
usbconfig -d 1.2 power_on

Alas, this turns the device on, but leaves power at 0mA and the touchpad still does not work.
I have also tried adding hw.psm.synaptics_support="1" to /boot/loader.conf. This also did not help.

Would love to hear any advice, thanks.
 
If you're a tester [0], please, send the output of dmesg to the freebsd-x11 mailing list.

Also post your issues there.

[0] https://wiki.freebsd.org/Graphics/Update i915 GPU driver to Linux 3.8#Testing_Instructions_.2F_How_To

Thanks for the pointer, I already sent my info earlier in the testing cycle, and I was hoping to start using the laptop with FreeBSD on it. It would give me more chance to really work with it running the new drivers.

I posted here since the touchpad issue is not really related to drm.
 
Mind to share experience with it under FreeBSD ? What about sleep/resume? I have plans to buy skylake version.
Alas, I have not yet had a chance to really work with the machine running FreeBSD and X11. What I can say is that the hardware is really nice and the build quality very good. It has one of my favourite recent keyboards. Also installing OpenBSD on it kills its ability to boot, and leaves you needing to replace the hard drive, so be careful with that.
 
Also installing OpenBSD on it kills its ability to boot, and leaves you needing to replace the hard drive, so be careful with that.
How can it be? Can you point me to the drama thread about this issue? I'm thinking about DragonFlyBSD as it's graphics stack supports Skylake.
 
How can it be? Can you point me to the drama thread about this issue? I'm thinking about DragonFlyBSD as it's graphics stack supports Skylake.

There are broken BIOSes that don't like the MBR partitioning layout OpenBSD uses, it uses its own partition type that a BIOS that is too clever might choke on.
 
Disturbing news indeed, Dell was well known for their support and even old models receive BIOS updates. Looks like there are no good brands left at all.
 
Disturbing news indeed, Dell was well known for their support and even old models receive BIOS updates. Looks like there are no good brands left at all.

I wouldn't despair entirely. I have had no problems with FreeBSD neither on ZFS or UFS. I did try an installation of Dragonfly, but failed to get the network working, other than that it installed fine.

I am sure you'll be fine if you can get your hardware working. Speaking of which, any ideas about the touchpad?
 
I think you got this wrong. You are pointing at the USB hub here. Should be 0.2. The VID of 0x8087 belongs to Intel and is the usb hardware.
I thought turning the power on might make a difference, but the devices seem unrelated. ugen1.2 is a dell bluetooth device, ugen0.2 is on.
 
Post this output for more help:
usbconfig -u 0 -a 2 dump_device_desc
Code:
ugen0.2: <Synaptics Large Touch Screen SYNAPTICS> at usbus0, cfg=0 md=HOST spd=FULL (12Mbps) pwr=ON (144mA)

  bLength=0x0012
  bDescriptorType = 0x0001
  bsdUSB = 0x0200
  bDeviceClass = 0x0000 <Probed by interface class>
  bDeviceSubClass = 0x0000
  bDeviceProtocol = 0x0000
  bMaxPacketSize = 0x0040
  idVendor = 0x06cb
  idProduct = 0x0af8
  bcdDevice = 0x0001
  iManufacturer = 0x0001 <SYNAPTICS>
  iProduct = 0x0002 <Synaptics Large Touch Screen>
  iSerialNumber = 0x0000 <no string>
  bNumConfigurations = 0x0001
 
Regarding synaptic touchpad have you looked at the VID/PID and cross checked usbdevs. Dell may have added a new PID that needs adding. Get it recognized by usbdevs and see if it works then.
https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd/blob/master/sys/dev/usb/usbdevs
The values do not seem to be in the usbdevs, will try to add them and rebuild. Unfortunately, I am also having some trouble with fatal firmware errors on the wireless adapter so it will take a little time to test.

Thanks for your insights.
 
So under Mister wBlocks wiki entry I see this-
  • Touch screen: not supported (Atmel maXTouch Digitizer)
I noticed your VID and PID were absent from usbdevs. Strange as 06cb is Synaptics...
 
Alas, I have not yet had a chance to really work with the machine running FreeBSD and X11. What I can say is that the hardware is really nice and the build quality very good. It has one of my favourite recent keyboards. Also installing OpenBSD on it kills its ability to boot, and leaves you needing to replace the hard drive, so be careful with that.

I had this issue running OpenBSD, but disabling "Intel Rapid Start" in the BIOS enabled me to get past it. If you are already experiencing issues, you may have to remove the internal SSD to get to the BIOS in order to disable it. Installing OpenBSD completely prevented me from even accessing the BIOS menu, but removing the SSD fixed the issue so I could access the BIOS menu again to disable "Intel Rapid Start"
 
Just wanted to let everyone know, the problem was solved by updating the BIOS from version A07 to A08.

Thanks for all your help! I'll report back how the machine works under FreeBSD, when I've had some time to work with it. So far I am very happy though.
 
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