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Re: can't disable Thinkpad touchpad

On 07/10/2015 03:56 PM, Haines Brown wrote:

On Fri, Jul 10, 2015 at 10:52:58AM -0400, Jape Person wrote:

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.



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.


Perhaps it worked for you because you turned both off. I'll give it
a try to see what happens.


I remember using something else a long time ago from the CLI:

$synclient TouchpadOff=1


This actually works! I put it into ~/.fluxbox/startup file, and it
works from there as well.
Good! I'm happy when my old notes turn out to be useful. I keep a set of notes on the most interesting and useful fixes I've run into over time. 


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.


Interesting, but I've no idea. Know nothing about intel-microcode,
iucode-tool, or an AMD equivalent (I'm running amd64).
It's not that, then. You'd have to enable the non-free and contrib repositories and deliberately install this stuff. You'd know if you had.
Besides, Henrique laughed at my suggestion, and I had to admit I was being paranoid/silly about blobs. 

;-)


With the Touchpad problem resolved, my problem becomes the more
basic one of corruption of the display whenever I close the X server.
But this needs to be pursued in another thread.
That is just plain weird, and I'm beginning to suspect a hardware issue. But it's often hard as heck to discern between problems caused by hardware / firmware / drivers. At least for bunglers like me!
I need to go back through the thread to see if I can even figure out exactly what you're seeing. On the face of it, it doesn't sound like anything I've encountered. 


Thanks, Jape



You're welcome. I'm happy I could help a little.

Jape
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