[ubuntu-uk] Synaptic Touchpad Issues

[A J Binnie]

Hi folks,

I've just had a hard drive failure and have had to do a completely
fresh install of Ubuntu 10.10. I had it running beforehand and I had
no problems with the touchpad, but because I'd upgraded from previous
releases, I think I probably had some old settings.

I've got an Acer Aspire 5920G. Googling initially suggested that I
checked xinput list to see if it was recognised. It generated this:

⎜   ↳ SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad              	id=15	[slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad              	id=16	[slave  pointer  (2)]

Now, I've since discovered that the media keys down the right-hand
side of the keyboard serve as a second touchpad, and they work as an
up/down scrolling device, but the main touchpad refuses to work. It
can be disabled and enabled by the Fn-F7 combination, but this is
shown as being enabled.

I've found various references to HAL and xorg.conf, but I don't have
an xorg.conf. I have an xorg.conf.d folder with similar looking files,
but they're read only and I don't feel comfortable editing them for
that reason.

Any suggestions?

Gus