Spurious disconnections when using the bottom of the touchpad

[attila-lendvai]

i have an Apple Wireless Trackpad physically attached to my kinesis keyboard, and therefore i often use the bottom part of the touchpad.

the symptom is that every now and then the Apple Wireless Trackpad disconnects (let's say a couple of times an hour), and i need to click its power button to reconnect it. it takes around 5 seconds, which is quite annoying.

it happens when i'm using the touch surface in that very moment; i.e. don't find it disconnected when it was not touched, or only very rarely.

with a little guidance i'm willing to look into why this is happening. i'm an experienced programmer, but i don't have much experience with modifying/debugging the linux kernel. i'm on Guix.

first, i should enable some logging, because there's not much useful in /var/log/messages.

Jan 27 17:12:20 localhost vmunix: [841871.497289] magicmouse 0005:05AC:030E.00FF: unknown main item tag 0x0
Jan 27 17:12:20 localhost vmunix: [841871.497478] input: Apple Wireless Trackpad as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:14.0/usb1/1-7/1-7:1.0/bluetooth/hci0/hci0:256/>
Jan 27 17:12:20 localhost vmunix: [841871.497836] magicmouse 0005:05AC:030E.00FF: input,hidraw5: BLUETOOTH HID v1.60 Mouse [Apple Wireless Trackpad] on 84:fd:>
Jan 27 17:13:28 localhost vmunix: [841939.303468] magicmouse 0005:05AC:030E.0100: unknown main item tag 0x0
Jan 27 17:13:28 localhost vmunix: [841939.303615] input: Apple Wireless Trackpad as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:14.0/usb1/1-7/1-7:1.0/bluetooth/hci0/hci0:512/>
Jan 27 17:13:28 localhost vmunix: [841939.303980] magicmouse 0005:05AC:030E.0100: input,hidraw5: BLUETOOTH HID v1.60 Mouse [Apple Wireless Trackpad] on 84:fd:>
Jan 27 17:14:07 localhost vmunix: [841977.772855] magicmouse 0005:05AC:030E.0101: unknown main item tag 0x0
Jan 27 17:14:07 localhost vmunix: [841977.773032] input: Apple Wireless Trackpad as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:14.0/usb1/1-7/1-7:1.0/bluetooth/hci0/hci0:256/>
Jan 27 17:14:07 localhost vmunix: [841977.773436] magicmouse 0005:05AC:030E.0101: input,hidraw5: BLUETOOTH HID v1.60 Mouse [Apple Wireless Trackpad] on 84:fd:>

[attila-lendvai]

is anyone seeing this?

give me a hint at least, please. if not here, then where else should i look for a solution?

i like my setup and i can't really find any good wired alternative, but the frequent disconnects are super annoying.

[attila-lendvai]

FTR, this seems to be the kernel bug tracking this problem:

https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=204589