How to disable the touchpad while typing? (Solved)

[harrisnyc]

Hi all,

I've mostly been a Windows user all my life, but I did dual-boot with Ubuntu for a few years recently. Now I'm trying Slacko Puppy version 5.6.0 on my HP laptop (a Pavilion dv6-3250-us) that has a Synaptics touchpad.

What's driving me nuts is that while I type, my palms evidently hover so close to the touchpad (without touching it, by the way) that the cursor is triggered, interfering greatly with my typing. I did check the box for "Palm detect" in the touchpad setup panel, but this seems to have had no effect.

I'm convinced that under Windows (where this phenomenon never occurs) the touchpad must be disabled while I'm typing. Yes, I have done searches and found some references to this issue, but none of them have seemed relevant or targeted enough for my problem.

Please help!! I just can't continue like this with Puppy, if I can't fix this issue.... THANKS!

Harris

SOLUTION: I placed an executable script inside /root/Startup, which runs the command "syndaemon -d -i 1".

Thanks all.

[harrisnyc]

Well I discovered the Linux command "syndaemon" which appears to have been written specifically to solve this problem! It works like a charm.

Running this daemon needs to be done after each bootup, however, so I'm now looking for a way to insert this command into some type of "startup" file. I'm running slacko off of my USB flash, by the way.

If anyone knows how to do this, great, otherwise I'll keep searching for that solution.

[mikeb]

since is X related i would suggest making a mini script in /root/Startup or drag /drop /symlink the syndaemon bu\inary if thats all thats needed

alternatively add it to /root./xinitrc

mike

[watchdog]

Menu-Utility-PupControl panel. Tab Hardware. Keyboard-mouse-screensaver. You'll find how to disable touchpad.

[harrisnyc]

Menu-Utility-PupControl panel. Tab Hardware. Keyboard-mouse-screensaver. You'll find how to disable touchpad.

Thanks, but this solution wasn't good enough, as I did not want to completely disable the touchpad -- I only wanted to disable it while I'm typing. Plus, the "palm detect" option in this utility didn't help.

[greengeek]

Hi harrisnyc - so are you saying that the daemon allows you to move the mouse with a finger on the touchpad, then when you start typing the touchpad becomes disabled, then when you stop typing it re-enables the touchpad again?

Once you stop typing how long is the delay before the touchpad is re-enabled?

EDIT : Ok, I get it, you have specified a one second timeout.
http://www.linuxcommand.org/man_pages/syndaemon1.html

Thanks for this tip!

[harrisnyc]

Hi harrisnyc - so are you saying that the daemon allows you to move the mouse with a finger on the touchpad, then when you start typing the touchpad becomes disabled, then when you stop typing it re-enables the touchpad again?

Once you stop typing how long is the delay before the touchpad is re-enabled?

EDIT : Ok, I get it, you have specified a one second timeout.
http://www.linuxcommand.org/man_pages/syndaemon1.html

Thanks for this tip!

Yup, you got it. It works really well. In fact, even the one-second idle time was too slow for me, so I tried .5 and it worked! Good luck.

[greengeek]

I decided to make a pet for this.
If you are having problems with the touchpad being active and causing your cursor to move while you are typing install this pet and touchpad function will be suspended while you type.

You can shorten or lengthen the timeout as desired by altering the last parameter in the script, which is placed in the /root/Startup directory.

Note: - syndaemon is not a separate piece of software. It is already built in to puppy so this script just accesses what is already there.

[Mike Walsh]

Hiya, greengeek.

You must be a mind-reader, man! I've got exactly the same problem with my elderly Dell Inspiron 1100 laptop. It, too, utilises a Synaptics touchpad (it's one reason, along with an excellent keyboard) why I've hung on to the old girl.

But it is sensitive. Many times I've found myself typing out a response to someone's post, only to look up seconds later, and find that the last few words have been stuck in the middle of a sentence several lines back up the screen. Most annoying...

This works nicely; although, since I describe myself as a fast '4-finger typist' , I've changed the time-out to 2 seconds. This works fine for me.

Many thanks! Like all the best ideas, it's very simple, and merely makes use of stuff Puppy already has.

BTW:- Where do you find the touchpad config file, so I can make sure SHMconfig is set to 'on'?

Cheers.


Mike.

[greengeek]

BTW:- Where do you find the touchpad config file, so I can make sure SHMconfig is set to 'on'?
:

On my Slacko 5.6 derivative the touchpad config file is called /root/.flSynclient
(note the dot and also the upper case "S")

In theory you can control the settings in that file by using the Menu, Desktop, FlSynclient utility (but it doesn't always allow the level of control you might want) - or by using the cli and entering commands like:
synclient AccelFactor=2
(however this does not always work the way you might expect. Sometimes a documented command is accepted but does nothing).

I think the best way to set the parameters is to modify the parameter settings in the /root/.flSynclient file then issue the following command:
flsynclient -s
(note the lower case "s").

All of this assumes that your synaptics module is loaded - and for some strange reason on my Toshiba laptop it sometimes gets loaded and sometimes doesn't (grrrr...)
EDIT : Let me re-phrase that - in fact I never actually see the synaptics module loaded (lsmod never shows it there) - its just that sometimes flSynclient tells me it can't run because the "synaptics module is not loaded". Go figure. When that happens my touchpad is annoyingly "tap-enabled" and the cursor scoots everywhere if i get close to the touchpad - and the only way I can get past this is to reboot. (Probably irrelevant info for anyone else but hey I thought I'd mention it)

[greengeek]

BTW:- Where do you find the touchpad config file, so I can make sure SHMconfig is set to 'on'?

Actually - I don't see SHMconfig parameter anywhere in my .flSynclient config file. What does it do?

- the more I look at my touchpad configuration the more I think there is something funny about my setup. FlSynclient succedds in altering my touchpad behaviour but I have no visible synaptics module loaded. How can this be?

Is synaptics somehow built into my kernel and doesn't show in lsmod? Is evdev taking over and pretending to bahave like the synaptics module??
Hmmm and hmmmmer.

I'm going down the rabbit hole...

[greengeek]

@Mike - I found an interesting webpage here and it helped me to discover that my SHMconfig is set to on (whatever exactly that means...).
EDIT : that webpage lists SHMconfig as an option that needs to be set within the xorg.conf file. Worth a look between 1/2 and 2/3 of the way down the page.

Below is an excerpt from my /var/log/Xorg.0.log:

Strangely the log tells me earlier that synaptics module is loaded yet i still don't see it when i do an "lsmod"

[dsummerbell10]

I tried the command syndaemon -d -i 1 and it worked for me. Thanks so much!

[greengeek]

Strangely the log tells me earlier that synaptics module is loaded yet i still don't see it when i do an "lsmod"

Apparently "synaptics" is not a kernel module - it is an xorg module so that is why it does not show by doing an "lsmod" command.

Use "report-video" command to see what modules xorg has loaded.

This thread here offers some info about knowing which modules are in use for video and touchpad etc