Disable touchpad when mouse plugged in

[TheSundering]

Ok fixed the problem for anyone else looking to do this. This is the last step for me and this script WORKS BEAUTIFULLY!.

THANK YOU Mr. Thompson!

Right from SHMConfig information

In a terminal type (for Gnome/Ubuntu):

gksudo gedit /etc/hal/fdi/policy/shmconfig.fdi

Then put the following code into the empty shmconfig.fdi file and save it.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<deviceinfo version="0.2">
  <device>
    <match key="input.x11_driver" string="synaptics">
      <merge key="input.x11_options.SHMConfig" type="string">True</merge>
    </match>
  </device>
</deviceinfo>

Once again this works absolutely wonderful and it's running right from startup.

Thank you Marine!

[xMarine73]

You bet!

You just happened to catch me while I was watching my email and was prepared to come out here to post up help. Glad you were able to get it working.

If you make changes to it, post up and share with the Ubuntu world.

[zpletan]

WOOHOO! I'm using Lucid; just found this! IT WORKS!

[GeekGirl1]

Add Maverick Meerkat to the list!

[connermcd]

This script works in Ubuntu 8.04, 8.10, and 9.04. Just make it executable, add it to your startup applications, and don't look back.

Basically it detects when a mouse is plugged in (you need to modify the script in one spot to do this - it's documented in the file) and disables the touchpad. Unplugging the mouse then re-enables the touchpad. I've also included a touchpad delay when it's active and you begin typing.

Hope it helps!

Thanks for this! Works great!

[gsanders99]

Not every touchpad is a Synaptics touchpad. Mine is Elantech, and that's why I had to use the UDEV method.

I recently installed Ubuntu 10.10 32-bit on my ASUS U80A laptop to replace the Kubuntu 10.04 64-bit I had before. I used the same method for solving the touchpad problem that I had used in my previous post (link below). This post describes how to create a UDEV rule to unload the module and disable the touchpad when a USB mouse is plugged in. It's pretty easy to do, only requiring a 2-line file to be created with your text editor.

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1530332

I just had to tweak it a bit, but the end result is that it works for me. Hope it helps some of the rest of you.

--- UPDATE ----

One other thing I did different was to copy my touchpad.rules file into /lib/udev/rules.d/ as 97-touchpad.rules

This made it disable the touchpad if the mouse was already plugged in at boot.

[krazynez]

This script works in Ubuntu 8.04, 8.10, and 9.04. Just make it executable, add it to your startup applications, and don't look back.

Basically it detects when a mouse is plugged in (you need to modify the script in one spot to do this - it's documented in the file) and disables the touchpad. Unplugging the mouse then re-enables the touchpad. I've also included a touchpad delay when it's active and you begin typing.

Hope it helps!

Hey, thanks for the .sh script it works really well (on 12.04.1). I was using touchpad-indicator however when I would put the computer to sleep it would always turn my touchpad off even with no external mouse plugged in. I also edited it instead of having gnome-panel it works with unity as well.