Asus X101H - Touchpad not recognized (want to disable while typing)

Question

I have been struggling with this issue for a while and have done an exhaustive search for answers here and elsewhere before posting this question.

On my Asus X101H, the touchpad is not recognized as a touchpad. I have noticed that this problem does not only occur with my netbook, or Asus netbooks, but a whole host of netbooks.

The devices are identified as "Glidepads". From what I have gathered, it is a kernel issue. And it is up to those working on the kernel to be resolved. However, people making bug reports on this issue have had issues with them being closed without being resolved, etc.

All I want is for this miserable "glidepad" to be disabled while I am typing so it doesn't ruin what I am trying to write. On my notebooks, it works fine. But on netbooks, the only options present are for a mouse.

I tried everyone's suggestion of installing "gpointing...", but that doesn't work even when I choose to "disable touchpad while typing". It has no effect.

Does anyone have a solution for this issue? It affects Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Debian, and Mint (and probably many, many more.)

Answer 1

Try running sudo modprobe -r psmouse and report how it went. It solved issue for me. If you want to enable it again run sudo modprobe psmouse proto=imps, also you can make a simple script with these commands that controls enabling/disabling touchpad this way.

Answer 2

My solution is not very different, but instead of unloading and loading the module, you can interface with xinput. If you list xinput devices and find your device:

$ xinput --list
⎡ Virtual core pointer                      id=2    [master pointer  (3)]
⎜   ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer                    id=4    [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint                         id=11   [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎣ Virtual core keyboard                     id=3    [master keyboard (2)]
    ↳ Virtual core XTEST keyboard                   id=5    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Power Button                                  id=6    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Video Bus                                     id=7    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Sleep Button                                  id=8    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Integrated Camera                             id=9    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ AT Translated Set 2 keyboard                  id=10   [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ ThinkPad Extra Buttons                        id=12   [slave  keyboard (3)]

So if I wanted to disable the trackpoint (just look for the ID), I could do so with the following command:

xinput set-prop 11 "Device Enabled" 0

To re enable it, just change from '0' to '1'.

There is also a synclient feature called palm detection, that might be able to help you. I haven't tested this myself, so I can't vouch for it.

Answer 3

To disable and enable your X server input devices xinput has syntactical sugar for both:

xinput set-prop ID# "Device Enabled" 0

and

xinput set-prop ID# "Device Enabled" 1

which are:

xinput disable ID#

and

xinput enable ID#

(where ID# is the number of the input device from xinput like the example below)

$ xinput --list
⎡ Virtual core pointer                      id=2    [master pointer  (3)]
⎜   ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer                    id=4    [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint                         id=11   [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎣ Virtual core keyboard                     id=3    [master keyboard (2)]
    ↳ Virtual core XTEST keyboard                   id=5    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Power Button                                  id=6    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Video Bus                                     id=7    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Sleep Button                                  id=8    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Integrated Camera                             id=9    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ AT Translated Set 2 keyboard                  id=10   [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ ThinkPad Extra Buttons                        id=12   [slave  keyboard (3)]