Introduction:
If you’re like me, you hate using your touchpad when you could be using an external mouse. If you’re like me you also have a habit of disabling your touchpad when using a mouse, and forgetting to re-enable it until after you unplug your mouse. If you’re like me, this tutorial is exactly what you need.
What you need to get started:
You will need to make sure that you have xinput and halevt installed. You almost certainly already have xinput, but the following command will make sure you have what you need:
sudo aptitude install xinput halevt
I also recommend that you create a folder for scripts (if you haven’t already), and add it to your $PATH. I created a “bin” folder in my home directory for this. Create the folder with:
mkdir ~/bin
and add it to your path by issuing the following commands:
echo "PATH=\$PATH:~/bin" >> ~/.bashrc echo "export PATH" >> ~/.bashrc
Configure the script:
First we need to create and configure the script which will actually toggle the touchpad:
cd ~/bin touch toggleTouchpad gedit toggleTouchpad
The script should now be open in gedit (feel free to replace gedit with your favorite text editor). Paste the following into the script:
# toggleTouchpad by Brendon Dugan
# Toggles a touchpad on or off depending on it's current state or CLI argument
#
# To configure, run the command 'xinput list' in terminal and identify your touch pad.
# Using the output of the above command, change the touchpadString variable to a substring
# of your touchpad's description that is unique to that device.
#
# To run, simply type 'toggleTouchpad' to toggle your touchpad on or off, or
# 'toggleTouchpad on' to explicitly turn your touchpad on, or
# 'toggleTouchpad off' to explicitly turn it off.
#
# Enjoy!
# A function for logging
safemk () {
if [ ! -d $1 ];
then mkdir $1;
chmod +rw $1;
fi
}
logdir=/home/$USER/.toggleTouchpad
touchpadString="TouchPad"
touchpadID=$(xinput list | grep "$touchpadString" | awk -F " " '{print $6}' | awk -F "=" '{print $2}')
touchpadEnabled=$(xinput list-props $touchpadID | grep "Device Enabled" | awk -F ":" '{print $2}')
sleeptime=1
# Create the logging directory
safemk $logdir
touch $logdir/errorLog.txt
# Check for arguments on the command line
if test $# -eq 1
then
# Change the argument to lowercase
arg1=$(echo $1 | tr [:upper:] [:lower:])
cliArg=1
else
# There is no argument.
cliArg=0
fi
if [ $cliArg -eq 1 ]
then
# If there's an argument, check to see whether it is on, off, or junk
if [ $arg1 = 'on' ]
then
# The argument was 'on', so turn the touchpad on
xinput --set-prop $touchpadID "Device Enabled" 1
if [ $(xinput list-props $touchpadID | grep "Device Enabled" | awk -F ":" '{print $2}') -eq 0 ]
then
echo "Something went wrong\n" >> $logdir/errorLog.txt
fi
elif [ $arg1 = 'off' ]
then
# Sleep for a short time to fix a bug that re-enabled the touchpad immediately after disabling it
sleep $sleeptime
# The argument was 'off', so turn the touchpad off
xinput --set-prop $touchpadID "Device Enabled" 0
if [ $(xinput list-props $touchpadID | grep "Device Enabled" | awk -F ":" '{print $2}') -eq 1 ]
then
echo "Something went wrong, perhaps \$sleeptime needs to be greater than $sleeptime ?\n" >> $logdir/errorLog.txt
fi
else
# The argument was junk, so log the error and go on
echo "Invalid argument \""$arg1"\" was supplied\n" >> $logdir/errorLog.txt
fi
else
# There was no argument, so just toggle the touchpad to the opposite
# of the state it has now.
if [ $touchpadEnabled -eq 1 ]
then
xinput --set-prop $touchpadID "Device Enabled" 0
else
xinput --set-prop $touchpadID "Device Enabled" 1
fi
fi
Now make the script executable by running:
chmod +x ~/bin/toggleTouchpad
Ok, we’re almost configured. We need to make sure that your touchpad will be affected by the script. Run the following command to get a list of all current input devices:
xinput -list
It should have an output something like this:
brendon@brendon-lappy-linux:~$ xinput -list
⎡ Virtual core pointer id=2 [master pointer (3)]
⎜ ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer id=4 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ Logitech Logitech BT Mini-Receiver id=15 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad id=12 [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)]
↳ Power Button id=8 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ Sleep Button id=9 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ Laptop_Integrated_Webcam_2M id=10 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ AT Translated Set 2 keyboard id=11 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ Dell WMI hotkeys id=13 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ Logitech Logitech BT Mini-Receiver id=14 [slave keyboard (3)]
brendon@brendon-lappy-linux:~$
If your touchpad has the word “TouchPad” (case sensitive) in it, the script is ready to go. If it doesn’t, edit the variable “touchpadString” in the script to match your touchpad… but remember everything is case sensitive. For now, your script is configured. Next step is testing.
Test the script:
Make sure your touchpad is working, and then open a new terminal window. We are going to do four tests. Before and after each test, try your touchpad.
Test 1:
toggleTouchpad
Did your touchpad stop working? Good!
Test 2:
toggleTouchpad
Did your touchpad start working again? Good!
Test 3:
toggleTouchpad off
Wait at least one second…
Did your touchpad stop working? Good!
Test 4:
toggleTouchpad on
Wait at least one second…
Did your touchpad start working again? Good!
Making the magic happen automatically:
We’re almost there! Now we need to set the script to run automatically when your mouse is plugged in. Making sure your mouse is unplugged, run the following command:
halevt -i >>~/connectedDevices.txt
While the command is running, plug in your mouse, and then unplug it. Now press Ctrl +c to kill the process. Open ~/connectedDevices.txt, and you should see something that looks like:
New Device: /org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/usb_device_46d_b02_noserial New Device: /org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/usb_device_46d_b02_noserial_if0 New Device: /org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/usb_device_46d_c70e_00076142E023 New Device: /org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/usb_device_46d_c70e_00076142E023_if0 New Device: /org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/usb_device_46d_c70e_00076142E023_if0_logicaldev_input New Device: /org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/usb_device_46d_c70a_00076142E023 New Device: /org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/usb_device_46d_c70a_00076142E023_if0 New Device: /org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/usb_device_46d_c70a_00076142E023_if0_logicaldev_input Device removed: /org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/usb_device_46d_c70e_00076142E023_if0_logicaldev_input Device removed: /org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/usb_device_46d_c70e_00076142E023_if0 Device removed: /org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/usb_device_46d_c70e_00076142E023 Device removed: /org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/usb_device_46d_c70a_00076142E023_if0_logicaldev_input Device removed: /org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/usb_device_46d_b02_noserial_if0 Device removed: /org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/usb_device_46d_c70a_00076142E023_if0 Device removed: /org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/usb_device_46d_c70a_00076142E023 Device removed: /org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/usb_device_46d_b02_noserial
All of those devices are your mouse. Since each of those events will trigger every time you plug in your mouse, we only need to handle one of them. Pick one that ends in seemingly random numbers, and copy and paste everything after the “:” into a text file. We will be using it in a moment. Now, let’s create our halevt config file:
touch ~/.halevt.xml && gedit ~/.halevt.xml
Paste the following into the file:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <halevt:Configuration version="0.1" xmlns:halevt="http://www.environnement.ens.fr/perso/dumas/halevt.html"> <halevt:Device match="hal.info.udi = /org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/usb_device_46d_c70e_00076142E023"> <halevt:Insertion exec="toggleTouchpad off"/> <halevt:Removal exec="toggleTouchpad on"/> </halevt:Device> </halevt:Configuration>
We are almost done! Remember the bit I had you paste into another file?? We are going to use that to identify your device. In the config file, change the line that says:
<halevt:Device match="hal.info.udi = /org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/usb_device_46d_c70e_00076142E023">
to say :
<halevt:Device match="hal.info.udi = /org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/the_rest_of_what_you_copied_into_the_file">
Theoretically, we’re done!
Test the Magic:
From terminal run:
sudo killall halevt halevt -c ~/.halevt.xml
Now, connect your mouse. If all is going well, about ~1.5 seconds after you plug in your mouse your touchpad should stop working. Now, disconnect your mouse. Your touchpad should start working again.
Making it permanent:
If all went well in the tests, you will want to make this happen automatically forever. Go to “System->Preferences->Startup Applications”, and add a new startup program. Name it something you will remember, and for the command put “halevt -c ~/.halevt.xml”. You’re done!!
Special Thanks:
While writing this script I received a great deal of help from the user Arndt at Ubuntuforums, so you should go leave him lots of love and thanks.
