X and the laptop touchpad

[Nobber]

My laptop's touchpad works fine under X in all but one respect: the special button above it - which in Windows turns the mouse off - doesn't work! Given the typical sensitivity of touchpads, and its position right below the keyboard, this can be a problem, especially during a heavy bout of word processing.

So, anyone any ideas how I can get round this problem? I would have thought there was some clever way to use one of the X utils to do the equivalent of sending all mouse clicks (at the very least - I don't care so much if the mouse still *moves*) - to /dev/null, or telling X to ignore all mouse input. But so far I've found nothing.

10 merit marks to the first person to come up with a nifty script called "mouse" that takes a single parameter: "on" or "off"!

[Nobber]

Thanks for all the helpful responses!

As it is, I'm now using a utility called tpconfig, which can turn the "tap to click" function of the touchpad on and off. Unfortunately, it can't be used while X is running, but it's better than nothing.

[Void Main]

I wish I had seen this before. Don't know how I missed it. I use tpconfig as well for my Synaptic Touchpad. If not used the thing is *way* too sensitive. Sorry I couldn't have saved you a few days of looking.

[Nobber]

^Do you use the kernel patch that allows you to turn tap mode on and off while X is running? That would be really useful, but I can't find a patch for any kernel > 2.4.15, and I doubt it would work on the Mandrake 9.0 stock kernel.

[Void Main]

No I don't, but I don't have a need to turn it off and on in X, I only want it off. On my system it goes into a service script (/etc/init.d/touchpad) that runs prior to X starting.