Hello,

I have a notebook, and when I try to write text documents, sometimes the cursor moves to a completely different part of the screen.

I found the solution, and thats to modprobe -r the module which drives the touchpad. However, once I've finished writing a text document, I'd like to be able to turn the trackpad back on, by loading the same kernel module as I used to turn it off.

I want both on and off functionality tied to a single key on my keyboard, so I guess I need a bash script, but I dont know how I'd do that. I was hoping someone might be able to help with a script.

We'll be glad to help...so post what you've written/tried so far, and where you're stuck. Depending on your window manager, you can probably tie a script to a particular hotkey, so that part is fairly easy. To get something to 'toggle' as you'd like, try looking for the module first with an lsmod command...if it's there, run the modprobe -r. If it's NOT there, just modprobe.

Im not too good with bash scripting, although I do know which driver module to remove/load ('psmouse'). I can tie the script to a key with fluxbox, its just getting the script to toggle from on to off, off to on, etc.

There are excellent tutorials you can read, the links are in my posting signature. The hints I provided before should be what you need to get going. What you need to do is to run lsmod and pipe it into grep looking for your psmouse module. Again, if it's present, run the modprobe -r to remove it. If it's NOT found, run the modprobe to insert it.

A good way to get better at scripting is to actually DO it. Again we will be glad to HELP, but we aren't going to write your scripts for you.

ok, no problem, Im just a bit pushed to learn at the moment. Thanks for the advice.

If it is by any chance a Synaptics touchpad, this works for me:
It uses the synclient program to toggle the touchpad on or off. I have bound it to a key-combination and it works without a hitch.

1 members found this post helpful.

I too had that problem, I fixed it with syndaemon, as such:

where 7000 is a random process number given by me.
It of course only applies in synaptic touchpad...

1 members found this post helpful.

I wanted to turn off the touchpad completely so I'll use Tobi's solution, thank you Tobi.

Thanks everyone, that should make it easier to type documents.