/dev/psm0 and Xorg woes

[Paul Fraser]

Hi all,

I've got an interesting problem which only just appeared today on my
6-STABLE laptop. Upon boot, gdm fails to load with the following
error:

gdm[874]: gdm_slave_xioerror_handler: Fatal X error - Restarting :0
gdm[961]: gdm_slave_xioerror_handler: Fatal X error - Restarting :0
gdm[965]: gdm_slave_xioerror_handler: Fatal X error - Restarting :0
gdm[871]: Failed to start X server several times in a short time
period; disabling display :0

Looking at the end of Xorg.0.log seems to indicate this is a problem
with the Synaptics Touchpad on the notebook (/dev/psm0):

(**) Option "CorePointer"
(**) Synaptics Touchpad: Core Pointer
(WW) <default pointer>: No Device specified, looking for one...
(II) <default pointer>: Setting Device option to "/dev/psm0"
(--) <default pointer>: Device: "/dev/psm0"
(==) <default pointer>: Protocol: "Auto"
(**) Option "AlwaysCore"
(**) <default pointer>: always reports core events
(==) <default pointer>: Emulate3Buttons, Emulate3Timeout: 50
(**) <default pointer>: ZAxisMapping: buttons 4 and 5
(**) <default pointer>: Buttons: 9
(II) XINPUT: Adding extended input device "<default pointer>" (type: MOUSE)
(II) XINPUT: Adding extended input device "Synaptics Touchpad" (type: MOUSE)
(II) XINPUT: Adding extended input device "Acer TravelMate 4230
Integrated Keyboard" (type: KEYBOARD)
Synaptics DeviceInit called
SynapticsCtrl called.
Synaptics DeviceOn called
(--) Synaptics Touchpad synaptics touchpad found
(--)  Synaptics Touchpad, model: 0
(--)  Firmware: 6.2
(--)  Sensor: 18
(--)  new absolute packet format
(--)  Touchpad has extended capability bits
(--)  -> multifinger detection
(--)  -> palm detection
(WW) fcntl(21, O_ASYNC): Inappropriate ioctl for device
(EE) xf86OpenSerial: Cannot open device /dev/psm0
	Device busy.
(WW) <default pointer>: cannot open input device

Fatal server error:
Caught signal 11.  Server aborting

I do have hw.psm.synaptics_support=1 defined in /boot/loader.conf, and
the kernel does identify it as a touchpad on boot:

psm0: <PS/2 Mouse> irq 12 on atkbdc0
psm0: [GIANT-LOCKED]
psm0: model Synaptics Touchpad, device ID 0

Trying to do cat /dev/psm0 gives me the following error:
cat: /dev/psm0: Resource temporarily unavailable

To me (though I'd hardly say I'm qualified to say for sure) this seems
to be the cause of the problem. I'm not running moused on this system,
so there shouldn't be anything locking the device.

Does anybody have any suggestions? It's quite frustrating, suddenly
being unable to use Xorg on my notebook when it was working perfectly
well just yesterday. But darned if I can think of what changes I
made...

FWIW, the touchpad does work fine under Windows.

-- 
Regards,

Paul Fraser
http://furyc0de.net/