David wrote:
I suggest to also test what happens if you start the system without using lightdm or X.
I tried this with three versions of the kernel: linux-image-4.19.0-9-amd64, linux-image-4.19.0-10-amd64, and linux-image-4.19.0-11-amd64 . Under all three versions, the built-in keyboard worked OK when booting into text mode. I could log in and issue commands. Under all three versions, I also said "cat /dev/input/mouse0" (as root), moved my finger around on the touchpad, and got various characters on the screen whenever I moved my finger. So the touchpad appeared to be working as well.
One way to do this is to boot into multi-user text mode.
I have the default configuration of sysvinit, which boots to runlevel 2 and starts everything (networking, X, etc). /etc/init.d/lightdm does tell me that if the word "text" is on the kernel command line, it won't start lightdm. This machine is configured for dual boot, so I already had grub configured to give me a "which OS?" menu at boot time. From that menu, I just appended " text" to the kernel command line, and booted; that got me into multi-user text mode. Matt Roberds
