Hi,

I have RH9 on a Compaq Presario 1245. No problems, however I would like to be able to turn the touch pad off. I brush my palm on it when typing and cause myself problems. Plugging in a PS/2 mouse doesn't disable the touch pad. I ran lsmod and found the module that seemed appropriate but wasn't allowed to kill it. Any ideas?

You should be able to disable it in your BIOS.

OK, thanks,

You don't need to go tweak the machine's bios, if you only want the touchpad deactivated under X window. I've had the same problem, and solved it by using several X config files:
- one which activates only my usb mouse
- one with touchpad only
- one with both mice

Go in you X configuration directory (it should be /etc/X11), copy the main file (should be named "XF86Config") in, say, "XF86Config-nopad", and edit the copy. There should be a section named "Pointer" referring to the touchpad, and another to the external PS/2 mouse. Just delete the lines corresponding to the touchpad.

When this is done, test the new file. Close X (if not already done), then launch it via this command on the shell prompt:
# startx -- -xf86config XF86Config-nopad

If everything works well, the touchpad now does nothing. To activate it back, you have to close X, and launch it with the default config file, this way:
# startx