surface-dial-renewed/doc/troubleshooting.md

Troubleshooting

Check the Service

systemctl --user status surface-dial-renewed.service
journalctl --user -u surface-dial-renewed.service -n 100 --no-pager

Expected startup lines:

surface-dial-renewed: running in Multitouch mode
surface-dial-renewed: dial connected

Check Raw Dial Rotation

Find the current event node:

rg -n -C 8 "Surface Dial System Multi Axis" /proc/bus/input/devices

Then run:

sudo evtest /dev/input/eventXX

Rotation should produce:

type 2 (EV_REL), code 7 (REL_DIAL), value ...

If REL_DIAL does not appear, the driver cannot scroll. Reconnect the Dial over Bluetooth and check again.

Wrong Event Node

The Control node is not the rotation node. It looks like:

Surface Dial System Control

and exposes KEY_SLEEP/KEY_WAKEUP. Use Surface Dial System Multi Axis for rotation.

Haptics Work But Scroll Does Not

Haptics use HID raw access; scrolling uses evdev input plus uinput output. Haptics working only proves the HID path works.

Check:

1. Raw REL_DIAL events with evtest.
2. Service logs for dial connected.
3. /dev/uinput permissions.
4. Whether Surface Dial Renewed Touchpad appears in /proc/bus/input/devices.

Sensitivity OSD Warnings

The service may log messages from qdbus6 about locale fallback, for example Detected locale "C". The OSD still works. This is caused by the systemd user service environment lacking a UTF-8 locale variable.

If it becomes noisy, set locale environment for the user service or replace the shell-out OSD backend with a direct D-Bus implementation.

Reconnect Oddities

After Bluetooth reconnects, event numbers can change. Always rediscover with:

rg -n -C 8 "Surface Dial" /proc/bus/input/devices

If button events appear but rotation does not, disconnect and reconnect the Dial again. The driver cannot synthesize rotation if the kernel is not emitting REL_DIAL.