disable touchpad?

Hi,

(a) Laptop touchpads can be a nuisance.  Is there a convenient way to
disable them?

(b) My Toshiba Portege laptop has a touchpad on/off button.  Is that
supported?

thanks,
-- 
~Randy  [please Cc: me on replies]

Hi Randy,

On Friday, February 24, 2012 12:04:04 PM Randy Dunlap wrote:

Hi,

(a) Laptop touchpads can be a nuisance.  Is there a convenient way to
disable them?

I'd start here: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SynapticsTouchpad

(b) My Toshiba Portege laptop has a touchpad on/off button.  Is that
supported?

Kernel probably emits one of KEY_TOUCHPAD_* for it; whether it is handled
in userspace I do not know.

-- 
Dmitry

On 02/24/2012 01:31 PM, Dmitry Torokhov wrote:

On Friday, February 24, 2012 12:04:04 PM Randy Dunlap wrote:

quoted

(b) My Toshiba Portege laptop has a touchpad on/off button.  Is that
supported?

Kernel probably emits one of KEY_TOUCHPAD_* for it; whether it is handled
in userspace I do not know.

I have heard from some of our engineers who have looked into this that 
the interface for these buttons is not standardized. Sometimes the 
buttons turn off the touchpad in hardware. Sometimes they emit events 
that tell the OS to turn it off, and the OS needs to know how to handle it.

On top of that, LEDs are sometimes there to tell you if the trackpad is 
on or off. These are also not standardized. Sometimes they are hooked up 
to the hardware, and when the hardware is off they go off. Sometimes 
they are just a plain old LED and the OS needs to turn it on and off.

Fun...

-- Chase

On Fri, Feb 24, 2012 at 02:27:06PM -0800, Chase Douglas wrote:

On 02/24/2012 01:31 PM, Dmitry Torokhov wrote:

quoted

On Friday, February 24, 2012 12:04:04 PM Randy Dunlap wrote:

quoted

(b) My Toshiba Portege laptop has a touchpad on/off button.  Is that
supported?

Kernel probably emits one of KEY_TOUCHPAD_* for it; whether it is handled
in userspace I do not know.

I have heard from some of our engineers who have looked into this
that the interface for these buttons is not standardized. Sometimes
the buttons turn off the touchpad in hardware. Sometimes they emit
events that tell the OS to turn it off, and the OS needs to know how
to handle it.

On top of that, LEDs are sometimes there to tell you if the trackpad
is on or off. These are also not standardized. Sometimes they are
hooked up to the hardware, and when the hardware is off they go off.
Sometimes they are just a plain old LED and the OS needs to turn it
on and off.

Fun...

I've worked with a few Toshibas, and while there's quite a bit of
variation within Toshiba models, all the ones I've seen report a key
event rather than disabling the touchpad in firmware. Some of them
report the key on the AT keyboard while others use a Toshiba-specific
ACPI interface.

Randy, if you can't find a key event currently being emitted on your
machine, I have some patches for toshiba_acpi to enable hotkeys for some
Toshibas [1].  You might give them a try.

Seth

[1] https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/1/18/328

On Friday, February 24, 2012 02:27:06 PM Chase Douglas wrote:

On 02/24/2012 01:31 PM, Dmitry Torokhov wrote:

quoted

On Friday, February 24, 2012 12:04:04 PM Randy Dunlap wrote:

quoted

(b) My Toshiba Portege laptop has a touchpad on/off button.  Is that
supported?

Kernel probably emits one of KEY_TOUCHPAD_* for it; whether it is
handled
in userspace I do not know.

I have heard from some of our engineers who have looked into this that
the interface for these buttons is not standardized. Sometimes the
buttons turn off the touchpad in hardware. Sometimes they emit events
that tell the OS to turn it off, and the OS needs to know how to handle it.

On top of that, LEDs are sometimes there to tell you if the trackpad is
on or off. These are also not standardized. Sometimes they are hooked up
to the hardware, and when the hardware is off they go off. Sometimes
they are just a plain old LED and the OS needs to turn it on and off.

Fun...

That's because hardware designers were so delighted in beauty that
is rfkill buttons, they just had to do the same with touchpads...

-- 
Dmitry

On 02/24/2012 02:37 PM, Seth Forshee wrote:

On Fri, Feb 24, 2012 at 02:27:06PM -0800, Chase Douglas wrote:

quoted

On 02/24/2012 01:31 PM, Dmitry Torokhov wrote:

quoted

On Friday, February 24, 2012 12:04:04 PM Randy Dunlap wrote:

quoted

(b) My Toshiba Portege laptop has a touchpad on/off button.  Is that
supported?

Kernel probably emits one of KEY_TOUCHPAD_* for it; whether it is handled
in userspace I do not know.

showkey doesn't show me any kbd scancode when I press that little key.  :(

At least using 'xinput set-prop 15 "Device Enabled" 0' (from the Ubuntu
community web page) does work.  That's helpful.

quoted

I have heard from some of our engineers who have looked into this
that the interface for these buttons is not standardized. Sometimes
the buttons turn off the touchpad in hardware. Sometimes they emit
events that tell the OS to turn it off, and the OS needs to know how
to handle it.

On top of that, LEDs are sometimes there to tell you if the trackpad
is on or off. These are also not standardized. Sometimes they are
hooked up to the hardware, and when the hardware is off they go off.
Sometimes they are just a plain old LED and the OS needs to turn it
on and off.

Fun...

I've worked with a few Toshibas, and while there's quite a bit of
variation within Toshiba models, all the ones I've seen report a key
event rather than disabling the touchpad in firmware. Some of them
report the key on the AT keyboard while others use a Toshiba-specific
ACPI interface.

Randy, if you can't find a key event currently being emitted on your
machine, I have some patches for toshiba_acpi to enable hotkeys for some
Toshibas [1].  You might give them a try.

Seth

[1] https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/1/18/328

OK, I'll take a look at those patches.

Thanks, everyone.

-- 
~Randy