On 07/10/2015 10:07 AM, Haines Brown wrote:
On a new Thinkpad x250, I've installed Sid. The touchpad causes problems, and so I want to disable it. The easy way is Fn+F8, but that key combination does nothing. Is this because Windows is not installed? What should be a sure fire way is to disable it in BIOS. I do that, but it has no effect. How do I get rid of it?
Now that is a new one on me. I've used multiple models of Thinkpads for years. I've always eschewed the use of touchpads and trackpoints, using a mouse instead. The BIOS setting has always worked to turn off the annoying little gizmos for me.
I remember using something else a long time ago from the CLI: $synclient TouchpadOff=1Resetting the value to 0 turned the touchpad back on. Maybe that can be a temporary workaround for you?
One idea (maybe far-fetched) did occur to me. Are you using the intel-microcode / iucode-tool (or the AMD alternative) for updating the microcode at boot time? If so, I guess its remotely possible that a fix in the microcode update is defeating your attempt at turning the touchpad off in the BIOS. But that surely would be a bug in the behavior of the microcode if it was changing your deliberate settings in the BIOS.
You could also make sure that you're running the latest version of the BIOS, and re-check to be sure there isn't more than one setting in the BIOS that could affect this behavior.
I don't have this exact model of Thinkpad so can't run through all of the BIOS settings myself to see if I can find something.
I hope someone can give you some help. I have been a sworn enemy of the touchpad for years. A large number of kvm manufacturers have chosen to use touchpads on their rack systems with no option to disable it -- with tap-to-click also enabled. Coupled with the usual overly-sensitive touchpad device, that combination can cause a sysadmin some serious issues when installing software on servers where the installer has lots of default buttons highlighted. You can go through an install decision tree that should take 20 minutes of careful consideration in 5 seconds. Not at all funny. Are you listening, Dell?
Good luck! Jape