Re: Dell laptop touchpad disabling?

[Randy Dunlap <rdunlap@infradead.org>]

Hi Hans,

On 3/18/22 01:54, Hans de Goede wrote:
> <attempt 2, fat-fingered send>
> 
> Hi Randy,
> 
> On 3/18/22 01:32, Randy Dunlap wrote:
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I have a Dell Inspiron 15 5510 laptop. Of course, it has a touchpad
>> (which I think of as a nuisance pad).
>> I would like to be able to disable the touchpad easily.
>>
>> Are there any best practices or suggestions for how to do this?
>> (I am using xfce4 as the desktop environment if that matters.)
>>
>>
>> Sometimes the touchpad is discovered as a PS/2 Generic Mouse on
>> the i8042 AUX port, and sometimes it is discovered as this
>> touchpad: "DELL0B24:00 04F3:3147 Touchpad" on some I2C device:
>> "i2c-DELL0B24:00". (The different discoveries might have something
>> to do with my kernel configuration/builds, but I don't know that
>> for sure.)
>>
>> I have some very hackish scripts that I can run to toggle the
>> 'inhibited' flag in sysfs (/sys/class/input/ for the I2C device or
>> or /sys/devices/platform/i8042/ for the i8042 AUX port device),
>> but that requires root (sudo), so that does not qualify as "easily"
>> IMO.
>>
>> E.g.,
>> $ sudo toggle-aux-mouse
>> or
>> $ sudo toggle-i2c-touchpad
>>
>> depending on which configuration the device is in.
> 
> The touchpad is supposed to be always recognized as, well a touchpad,
> so you want it to show up as "DELL0B24:00 04F3:3147 Touchpad", as
> you said this likely depends on your kernel config.
> 
> And then usually the desktop environment will give you an option
> to disable it. At least GNOME offers a clear on/off toggle see e.g. :
> 
> https://blog.separateconcerns.com/img/gnome-touchpad-settings.jpg

OK, I finally found that. and it works.

> Or you could use xinput properties to set the matching xinput
> device, to disabled which you can do by device-name:
> 
> https://linuxhint.com/change_mouse_touchpad_settings_xinput_linux/
> 
> And then change the "Device Enabled" property.

and that also works.

> Regardless of the method, the kernel's responsibility here is
> to make sure the touchpad gets seen as a touchpad and after that
> "disabling" it is a userspace problem.

Sure, I get it.

Thanks for your help.