LinuxQuestions.org - Disabling Touchpad

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Disabling Touchpad

Hello,

Looking for opinions on what is the best way to disable the touchpad on a Sony VAIO. I just installed Slack64 13.1 and love it... thanks Pat & crew.

Thanks in advance,
Mark

I have a Dell Studio 17 and did like this, maybe it works for you too..it's from "CHANGES_AND_HINTS.TXT"...
ftp://ftp.slackware.no/pub/linux/sla...ckware64-13.1/

Quote:

If you are using input hotplugging via HAL and a synaptics touchpad, then you
might need to copy /usr/share/hal/fdi/policy/10osvendor/11-x11-synaptics.fdi
to /etc/hal/fdi/policy/ and edit it to suit your needs. You can also use
synclient(1) to make changes "on the fly."
Also note that any touchpads that include actual buttons as part of the
touchpad hardware will not have tap-to-click enabled by default.

..then edit so "shared memory"..

Quote:

Switch on shared memory, enables the driver to be configured at runtime
<merge key="input.x11_options.SHMConfig" type="string">true</merge>

..is enabled, this is my file..

Quote:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<deviceinfo version="0.2">
<device>
<match key="info.capabilities" contains="input.touchpad">
<merge key="input.x11_driver" type="string">synaptics</merge>
<merge key="input.x11_options.SHMConfig" type="string">true</merge>

<merge key="input.x11_options.TapButton1" type="string">1</merge>

<!-- EXAMPLES:
Switch on shared memory, enables the driver to be configured at runtime
<merge key="input.x11_options.SHMConfig" type="string">true</merge>

Then you can control it with the command "synclient", I put..
synclient TouchpadOff=1
in my ~/.profile to turn it off.

/Håkan

After fighting this issue on a variety of laptops I currently just remove the psmouse module (as root) with

Code:

modprobe -r psmouse

and that stops the touchpad working.

On my previous laptop I tried a suggestion made to me in this forum of creating udev rules to react to the usb mouse being plugged or unplugged, disabling/enabling the touchpad accordingly using synclient. That was probably the best method except it didn't work if the USB mouse was plugged in before booting.

Quote:

Originally Posted by mcnalu (Post 3985034)

After fighting this issue on a variety of laptops I currently just remove the psmouse module (as root) with

Code:

modprobe -r psmouse

and that stops the touchpad working.

Excellent! I knew it would be something simple but all of my searches produced nothing. Thank you very much.

hakan56, I will try your method later. Thanks for the suggestion, I genuinely appreciate it.

I turned mine off in the bios..

Then you can control it with the command "synclient", I put..
synclient TouchpadOff=1
in my ~/.profile to turn it off.

How does one create ~/.profile? I don't see it when I do "ls .*" in my home directory.

This is on thinkpad r40, slack 13.1,

Quote:

Originally Posted by north49er (Post 3997343)

To create it, use

Code:

touch ~/.profile

To see it, try

Code:

ls -a

Actually, I was disabling tapping by using "synclient MaxTapTime=0" in terminal console. But I had to do it after every reboot. The following was edited:

Quote:

<merge key="input.x11_options.TapButton1" type="string">1</merge>

to:

Quote:

<merge key="input.x11_options.TapButton1" type="string">0</merge>

Now the tapping function of the touchpad is disabled by default. My problem solved.

Howdy slackers:

Stumbling upon this thread while trying to figure out how to disable my synaptics touch pad, since it picks up my typing vibrations and selects things randomly, etc., and is an overall pain in the you know what, I used mcnalu's solution of removing the psmouse module from the kernel, and it worked great, so I went ahead and made a script and called it tptoggle.

Then, since I am an xfce user, I selected "settings" from the xfce menu and then "keyboard" and then "application shortcuts" and I created a shortcut to the tptoggle script (had to put sudo in the command, to make it work) and bound it to the F9 key.

Now I can toggle it on and off with the F9 key and I'm happy.

Here is the tptoggle script, to copy and paste, save, and make executable with "chmod +x" if you so desire:

Code:

#!/bin/sh

if ! grep -wq psmouse /proc/modules ; then

    /sbin/modprobe -q psmouse; else 

    /sbin/modprobe -r psmouse; 

fi

Alas, returning to my laptop after a momentary reprise, I discovered that the F9 toggle had stopped working; the reason was because when I made it, I had recently used the "sudo" command and still had root privileges, so the toggle worked until those privileges expired.

Therefore I made an amendment, and wrapped the command with "xterm -e" so that it can ask you for your password if it needs to. The line that got bound with the F9 key now reads as:

Code:

xterm -e sudo /usr/local/scripts/tptoggle

(naturally, that depends on my having saved the tptoggle script in /usr/local/scripts)

thanks mcnalu

i found synaptics suggestions, my toshiba uses alps, f9 didnt work but modprobe -r psmouse does