# Synaptics Touchpad freezes if Powerd is enabled



## Cero (Jun 28, 2012)

Hi all, first of all, *I* have to say that *I*'m completely a newbie in the BSD world 

I installed FreeBSD on my Alienware M17X, everything seems to work flawlessy. I installed X, then KDE and *I* got no problem at all (even with an ATI video card that gave me lots of troubles on Linux, that's amazing!).

The problem now is with the touchpad: *I* haven't enabled Synaptics support (*I*'ll explain later why). When *I* use the touchpad, the mouse cursor often freezes and then moves "randomly", making it useless. After some research, *I* tried to disable powerd (*I* enabled it in the installation wizard), and now it seems that there's no problem at all about the mouse. Of course that's not a real solution because battery life is really poor now.

If there's no known fix, there is any powerd alternative on *Free*BSD?

About Synaptics, when *I* install xf86-input-synaptics, the system just stop*s* working. I have to reboot with the power key, but X bec*o*mes useless. However now that *I* can see the touchpad working, *I* know there's no need to install this, as it just works (except the "incompatibily" with powerd, which is what *I*'m asking you about )


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## plamaiziere (Jun 28, 2012)

Cero said:
			
		

> When I use the touchpad, the mouse cursor often freezes and then moves "randomly", making it useless. After some research, I tried to disable powerd (I enabled it in the installation wizard), and now it seems that there's no problem at all about the mouse.



Maybe powerd sets the CPU at a very low speed (I've seen such issue with the ndis driver)

A trick could be to set the sysctl debug.cpufreq.lowest to a higher frequency. You can retrieve the frequencies with `sysctl dev.cpu.0.freq_levels`

Just an idea, regards.


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## Cero (Jun 28, 2012)

plamaiziere said:
			
		

> May be powerd sets the cpu at a very low speed (I've seen such issue with the ndis driver..)
> 
> A trick could be to set the sysctl debug.cpufreq.lowest to a higher frequency. You can retrieve the frequencies with the sysctl dev.cpu.0.freq_levels
> 
> Just an idea, regards.


That would be strange, because the USB mouse works without issues.

However, that's the output of `sysctl dev.cpu.0.freq_levels`

```
2395/35000 2261/32777 2128/30555 1995/28333 1862/26111 1729/23888 1596/21666 1463/19444 1330/17222
 1197/15000 1047/13125 897/11250 748/9375 598/7500 448/5625 299/3750 149/1875
```

If *I* understood it right. Well, lower frequencies are VERY low :O
I'll let you know if it helps.


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## Cero (Jun 28, 2012)

Mmmm there's no way to edit posts?


However, doesn't fix the issue (*I* put the minimum frequency to 897, it should be enough to handle the mouse, right? :\)


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