my laptop's touchpad stopped working

[Erik Christiansen]

On Sun, Nov 09, 2008 at 08:29:55PM -0800, Pastor JW wrote:
> On Sunday 09 November 2008 2:30:17 pm ike ibekwe wrote:
> > please i recently upgraded to ubuntu 8.10 and everything seemed ok. now my
> > touchpad has stopped working. i can still use it to left-click and
> > right-click, but i cant move the mouse about. any way out? please?
> 
> Man, I wish you could tell me how you did that!   

The following is what I used to automatically turn off the touchpad when typing
starts, and turn it on again a selected number of seconds after I stop typing.
That avoids the need to support one's thumbs with rubber bands to the
ceiling.

IIRC, a recent post indicated problems with syndaemon on the latest
ubuntu version, which is also reported to have an emasculated
/etc/X11/xorg.conf. However, if you've been cautious enough to avoid the
bleeding edge, you can use:

In /etc/X11/xorg.conf, add the comment and following line: >>>

Section "InputDevice"
   Identifier   "Synaptics Touchpad"
   ...
#  To allow touchpad to be turned off:
   Option      "SHMConfig" "on"
EndSection
<<<

To provide automatic disabling during typing, use:  syndaemon -i 1 -d
    Default re-enable interval is: i = 2 seconds

   On ubuntu, this may be inserted in:
   System>Preferences>Sessions>Startup_Programs

Manual runtime touchpad disabling:
    synclient touchpadoff=[0|1]     # 0 = On, 1 = Off.

To list touchpad options, and their current settings:    synclient -l

If you have moved to Ibex, then you may be on a backwardly incompatible
beast.

Erik

-- 
I have long felt that most computers today do not use electricity. They
instead seem to be powered by the "pumping" motion of the mouse!
 - William Shotts, Jr. on http://linuxcommand.org/learning_the_shell.php