[SOLVED] How can I tell LMDE2 to turn off the touchpad?

[BrunoMiranda]

I just can't get the touchpad do turn off. This is a bad one and it does more harm than good.

I've disabled everything in the touchpad controls on the Control Center, but all that is ignored and the touchpad is happilly getting itself on the way.

I've seen this post regarding the same problem on LMDE3 but there's no help there. I'm about to put a sticker on top of the touchpad so it can't feel me.

viewtopic.php?f=247&t=277930


My question is, is there any way I can disable the touchpad? Terminal commands would be fine, as I could write something up to keep it disabled at boot time, and eventually when I need it I can run any other commands and after it kill it again.

Any suggestions, please? Thanks!

[sleeper12]

Try in terminal:

synclient TouchpadOff=1

Turn back on:

synclient TouchpadOff=0

[BrunoMiranda]

@sleeper12, thanks for your reply!

It doesn't work, but your help was enough for me to keep on pushing the string and find the end of it. I've done it!

Ok, so synclient doesn't work, with the output:

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synclient
Couldn't find synaptics properties. No synaptics driver loaded?

So I don't think this is a synaptic touchpad.


From:
https://wiki.debian.org/SynapticsTouchpad

(funny it skips Debian Jesse!)

Determining the type of Touchpad

The following command will tell you whether you have a Synaptics, ALPS or Elantech touchpad:

egrep -i 'synap|alps|etps|elan' /proc/bus/input/devices

it outputs nothing, so I believe none if the supported touchpads is detected.

Running

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cat /proc/bus/input/devices

outputs (among other irrelevant stuff)

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I: Bus=0011 Vendor=0002 Product=0006 Version=0000
N: Name="[b]ImExPS/2 Generic Explorer Mouse[/b]"
P: Phys=isa0060/serio1/input0
S: Sysfs=/devices/platform/i8042/serio1/input/input6
U: Uniq=
H: Handlers=mouse0 event5 
B: PROP=1
B: EV=7
B: KEY=1f0000 0 0 0 0
B: REL=143

and HardInfo detects it as:

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Name: ImExPS/2 Generic Explorer Mouse
Type: Mouse
Bus: 0x11
Vendor: 2
Product: 0x6
Version: 0x0
Connected to: isa0060/serio/input0

(note I do not have any mouse connected to this computer)

Doing more research I find complaints about this touchpad from 2008... Yikes!

And from
https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2254023

it quotes:

The module used is psmouse, unloading it prevents the touchpad from working and loading it again makes the touchpad work.

and from here I've researched how to load and unload modules. Basically:

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sudo rmmod /lib/modules/4.9.0-0.bpo.6-amd64/kernel/drivers/input/mouse/psmouse.ko

will unload the psmouse kernel module, disabling the touchpad!

and

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sudo insmod /lib/modules/4.9.0-0.bpo.6-amd64/kernel/drivers/input/mouse/psmouse.ko

will load the psmouse kernel module, re-enabling the touchpad!

So now I've created some simple bash scripts to disable and enable the keypad, as well as some keyboard shortcut bindings. DONE!

So this thread is marked as solved!

[sleeper12]

Wow, great detective work Maybe that will help some others too.