Can you attach the output of dmesg?

Note that with the new kernel26 package, Elantech touchpads are recognized as ETPS/2 touchpads instead of logitech IMPS/2 devices. With my laptop, I had to switch to the synaptics driver to get tapping back. The evdev driver somehow doesn't respond to taps with the new kernel.

You must be right, this line doesn't appear on my kernel.
input: ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad as /class/input/input6
Then I don't know what caused the touchpad to fail once. I thought there would be a relation between these erorrs. But when the first one is in fact a "feature", perhaps it was just coincidence. I'll keep testing Arch's kernel. If it occurs again, I'll report back.

Now I'm able to reproduce it. After a vt-switch the touchpad doesn't respond until X gets reset by kdm after a logout or restarted. There are no problems with my USB-mouse. Also I didn't notice that when running my kernel.

I just tried it, switching to vc1 and coming back to X my touchpad worked fine (using synaptics) along with tapping. However I lost my keyboard (using evdev), I managed to reset it by c/p:

echo -n "i8042" > /sys/bus/platform/drivers/i8042/unbind
echo -n "i8042" > /sys/bus/platform/drivers/i8042/bind

The keyboard worked, but half of my keys were wrongly mapped (mainly media keys, but some of them are double purpose and important, like up/dn). Restarting X after that didn't make a difference. If this happened with 2.6.27 and older evdev I haven't noticed, being that I hardly ever switch consoles. Should I redirect this to another bug report?

you need to configure your x correct, with the new kernel also touchpads are handled with the synaptics driver

Now I'm using synaptics. My previous problems are gone, but there is a new one: The cursor always moves 2 pixels.
I modified 11-x11-synaptics.fdi to also handle "ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad" because it wasn't detected as a touchpad.
Even with Option "AutoAddDevices" "False" in xorg.conf and only having synaptics as driver result in this problem.

I wonder how you can move exactly one pixel with a touchpad. When I start moving slowly on my ETPS/2 touchpad, my cursor always moves either 2 or 3 pixels.

Edit:
to test synaptics settings, you should turn on input hotplugging and edit the fdi file you use for your synaptics settings. Settings are reloaded whenever the mouse gets attached and detached, something that can be done by rmmodding and insmodding the psmouse kernel module. This is easier than restarting X everytime you want to try new settings.
Another option is using SHMConfig and some GUI tool to make settings.

Tried several options with synaptics, but I cannot solve the problem. Well, it's not really obstructive, therefore you may close this bug.
Just inform the users about that change: They need a new HAL-policy for this touchpad.
<match key="info.capabilities" contains="input.touchpad"> doesn't comprehend it.
I used <match key="info.product" contains="ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad">

Thanks :-)

I can confirm this is a problem with the Arch Linux patchset. I had this problem on my Eee PC 900 using the kernel in testing. Going back to 2.6.27-7 fixed it. Today I compiled a vanilla 2.6.28 kernel on my Gentoo machine (compiling sucks on this Eee ;)) and I'm running it now on my Eee and I am not experiencing this bug, and I've been using the same xorg.conf this whole time.

This is caused by the new CONFIG_MOUSE_PS2_ELANTECH option which is set in the default archlinux kernel. Without this option, the touchpad is emulated as a Logitech IMPS/2 mouse, which was the case for 2.6.27. The disadvantage of this option is that evdev doesn't detect tapping anymore, but the bright side of this is that the synaptics driver supports the touchpad when this option is set, and allows much more configuration than the standard mousedrivers available.

I am very glad to say that what I reported above in comment 36835 is fixed with the latest bundle of X.org updates from 13.02. I am able to switch between consoles and keyboard is still working when I return to X if using evdev.

So this bug is actually fixed with latest xf86-input-evdev and/or xf86-input-synaptics packages?

I did not have a touchpad problem like OP did, unfortunately I did with my keyboard and I was able to find only one or two other people (on the BBS) that experienced the same (evdev keyboard stops working on console switch). I directed them to this report but I see that neither checked in.

So the keyboard is fixed with the upgrade, definitely.
While the touchpad "bug" was never really a bug as I understand it... just people not reading documentation/changelog.

OK, so the keyboard works fine now and the touchpad works fine after changing the .fdi file to load synaptics instead of evdev for Elantech touchpads? In that case I'll update the default synaptics fdi file to match on elantech touchpads too and close this bug.

Yes, it works then. But to get all functions back (tapping, scrolling, ...) additional options are needed. Even the edges aren't detected correctly.
But I haven't used synaptics before, so I don't know how well it should work.

Tapping still doesn't work. Edge-scrolling doesn't work (but two-finger-scrolling does). Any hints on how to enable it again are very welcome.

this is a config issue setup your /etc/hal/policy/11-synaptics... correct for this, it is disabled by hal by default.
You need to copy synaptics file to /etc/hal/... to correct this.

My /etc/hal/fdi/policy/11-x11-synaptics.fdi:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<deviceinfo version="0.2">
<device>
<match key="info.capabilities" contains="input.mouse">
<match key="info.product" contains="ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad">
<merge key="input.x11_driver" type="string">synaptics</merge>
<merge key="input.x11_options.SHMConfig" type="string">on</merge>
</match>
</match>
</device>
</deviceinfo>

I've tried enabling tapping et al in gsynaptics (and ksynaptics), but still no go. I can adjust all the other parameters without problem.

You need some more configuration, here's my current config:
http://forum.archlinux.de/?page=Postings;id=20;thread=11767;post=2
You can test settings with synclient.