Featured Post

My favorite links (ranked)

#1  Linux laptop powertuning painlessly (almost) #2 hard-drive-recovery #3 Chromebook Specifications #4 Internet BMW riders   #5 Findagra...

Friday, November 9, 2018

Disabling the touch pad on HP chromebook butterfly running linux

I  despise track pads.
I use a wireless USB mouse instead so....

1. Determine track pad device id as follows from command line...

    $ xinput list
⎡ Virtual core pointer                    id=2 [master pointer  (3)]
⎜   ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer              id=4 [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ Logitech K520                            id=9 [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ Logitech M325                            id=10 [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ Logitech M310/M310t                      id=11 [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ Cypress APA Trackpad (cyapa)            id=15 [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)]
    ↳ HP Truevision HD: HP Truevision          id=12 [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ AT Translated Set 2 keyboard            id=13 [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Logitech K520                            id=14 [slave

Note the (id 15) Cypress APA Trackpad and
also note my (id 10) add on logitech m325 USB wireless mouse.
Also, you may have to install xinput package if not already installed on
your system. Google installing for your particular system.

Now use a suitable text editor (like vi) to create some bash scripts as follows:
     
2. ~/bin/trackpaddown

     containing:

     #!/bin/bash
   
     xinput set-prop 15 "Device Enabled" 0

3. ~/bin/trackpadup

    containing:

   #!/bin/bash

   xinput set-prop 15 "Device Enabled" 1

4. chmod 755 /bin/trackpad*

5. From command prompt issue trackpaddown to disable the on board trackpad or trackpadup to reenable the builtin trackpad device.

6. To automate this at lubuntu startup...

7. Create this directory and file...

    mkdir /home/login/scripts

    containing....

    touch /home/login/scripts/start-up.sh

    #!/bin/bash

    ~/bin/trackpaddown

    don't forget this...

    chmod 755 /home/login/scripts/start-up.sh

    Note that "login" in the paths above (item 7) are to be specific to your login !

update:  (12/3/2018) I've noticed more weird focus jumping in chrome and I just checked with:

xinput --list --short

and discovered an additional still active
 "Cypress APA Trackpad (cyapa)             id=13 [slave  pointer  (2)]"
 line in the output so I went back and revised the trackpaddown script to read thusly...

#!/bin/bash

xinput set-prop 15 "Device Enabled" 0
xinput set-prop 13 "Device Enabled" 0

Now the focus jumping issues are gone.... finally. Hooray!
 
update:  (10/31/2020) Today I discovered the disabling of device thirteen had somehow automagically changed to device id 14 rendering my script inoperable. Had to edit and run it manually to disable the trackpad. It is always something isn't it?
 

No comments:

Post a Comment

Comments welcome!