Toggle synaptics touchpad

On my Toshiba the touchpad has a nasty habit of re-enabling itself, so I use the more durable approach of unloading the psmouse module:

#!/bin/sh
if xinput list-props "SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad" | grep "Device Enabled" | grep 1 > /dev/null 2>&1
then 
        modprobe -r psmouse > /dev/null 2>&1
        echo "Touchpad disabled"
else
        modprobe psmouse > /dev/null 2>&1
        echo ""
        echo "Touchpad now enabled"
fi

Of course you need root permission to use modprobe, but that isn't a problem since I always have a root shell open.

Last edited by Penguin Skinner (2011-01-09 16:16:27)

Hope you don't! It's unbelievably annoying to be typing along and suddenly there's mayhem on your desktop.

As i experienced the same problem as Penquin Skinner, i now use a different method:

#!/bin/bash

if [ $(xinput list-props  "AlpsPS/2 ALPS GlidePoint" | grep "Device Enabled"  | awk '{print $4}') -eq 1 ]; then
#if [ $(synclient -l | grep TouchpadOff | gawk -F '= ' '{ print $2 }') -eq 0 ]; then
    #synclient TouchpadOff=1
    xinput set-int-prop "AlpsPS/2 ALPS GlidePoint" "Device Enabled" 8 0
    notify-send "touchpad disabled"
else
    #synclient TouchpadOff=0
    xinput set-int-prop "AlpsPS/2 ALPS GlidePoint" "Device Enabled" 8 1
    notify-send "touchpad enabled"
fi

This seems to work... (till now)
Tuna

What about if everything works initially, but just "dies" after switching the touchpad on/off?

I have aliases set up to disable mine.

alias mouseon='sudo modprobe psmouse'
alias mouseoff='sudo modprobe -r psmouse'

but this is for a Google cr48.

My problem is with enabled the tap feature instead of a hard click, but the multi-touch for scrolling works out of the box. If only the tap feature would work I would have a perfect #! setup on a Google Chrome cr48, with a flashed intel bios