Turn off touchpad without synclient

Ever since I bought my laptop, Linux has had problems with its touchpad. For example, Arch recognizes it as an PS/2 mouse instead of Synaptics or ALPS touchpad. Because of this, when I switch off the touchpad with its off button, I can’t turn it back on again.

So after doing some research, I discovered that there is another way to do what I want. That is to load/unload responsible module with modprobe.

I made a simple bash script that does this, and mapped a keyboard shortcut. Also I needed to change the sudoers file, so that I can use modprobe -r psmouse and modprobe psmouse without giving the root password. Works like a charm.

#!/bin/sh

if lsmod | grep -q psmouse
    then sudo modprobe -r psmouse & echo 'Touchpad turned OFF'
    else sudo modprobe psmouse & echo 'Touchpad turned ON'
fi

Tags: arch, laptop, linux

This entry was posted on December 20th, 2009 and is filed under linux. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or Trackback from your own site.