Keyboard shortcut to disable touchpad

As I wrote a few hours ago it would be nice to be able to have a keyboard shortcut to enable/disable the touchpad. So when I started eat a chocolate cake I decided to fix the problem for Ubuntu and MSI S271. It should work in most GNOME-based Linux distributions and for most touchpads.

First I wrote a script to toggle the touchpad (download here):
#!/bin/bash

if lsmod | grep "^psmouse " > /dev/null ; then
/usr/bin/sudo /sbin/rmmod psmouse ;
else
/usr/bin/sudo /sbin/modprobe psmouse ;
fi

No rocket science here. Put the script some where on your harddrive, like /usr/local/bin. Add the following line in the end of your /etc/sudoers file:
ALL ALL=(ALL)NOPASSWD: /sbin/rmmod psmouse, /sbin/modprobe psmouse

This gives all users the right to enable and disable the touchpad.

Register your the script as a keybinding command in gconf:
gconftool-2 -t str --set /apps/metacity/keybinding_commands/command_1 "/usr/local/bin/toggle-tp.sh"

Register in the same way what shortcut key to launch the command:
gconftool-2 -t str --set /apps/metacity/global_keybindings/run_command_1 "0xb2"

I selected the webbrowser launcher-key, which have 0xb2 as keycode, to toggle my touchpad. You can find examples of other keycodes here.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Thanks a lot for this tip. I was looking for something to disable my touchpad for more than 1 year!
Anonymous said…
If I wasnt a declared atheist, I would have included you in my evening prayers for the rest of my life. Typing into vim on a small eee and having the cursor jump around because my fat thumbs keep hitting the touchpad is my idea of eternity in hell. Thanks a million times for this useful piece of sweet.

Have a nice day

-- Basim
Anonymous said…
Thanks for this tip, its a great workaround for the ubuntu touchpad gsynaptics issue on eee-pcs that prevents disabling tap-to-click. I can now type term papers on my eeepc without my stupid thumbs getting in the way.
Anonymous said…
Using full gnome (I'm using Ubuntu9.04), the best way to do this is (IMHO):

From the System menu, choose Preferences and then Keyboard Shortcuts.
Scroll to the bottom, and click on the Add button at the bottom.
In the new window, enter the name:
Toggle touchpad
and the command:
/usr/bin/gconftool --toggle /desktop/gnome/peripherals/mouse/touchpad_enabled

Then you can assign whatever keyboard shortcut you like to it. I use ctrl-alt-t.
joep said…
thanks for the tip. while trying i was enough of an idiot to not use visudo to edit the sudoers-file. And have had quite an interesting ride getting the possibility to sudo back again. Maybe you could make an extra warning in the post?

It works like a charm now, BTW :D

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