Bug 528485

this is possibly gnome-settings-daemon conflicting. do you have "disable touchpad while typing" set in system-prefernces-mouse-touchpad?

No, I do not have "Disable touchpad while typing" set in System > Preferences > Mouse > Touchpad.  As far as I can recall, I never used this setting.

Uhm, it seems it does not even survive a logout.

Peter, do you think you will be able to have a look at it (no need to promise a timeline, just to know I don't need to)

Same problem in Fedora 12.

So, I investigated a bit more the issue with the help of gconftool-2 and gconf-editor; not sure it's meaningful, but I'm reporting here to share my findings.

I examined the /desktop/gnome/peripherals tree and I found out the touchpad/ subtree stores the settings of the stock Touchpad preference tab.

I tried to set the "off" value to true but it seems that the GNOME startup sequence does not reapply the gconf setting.

So the first question to fix this would be: what piece of code is supposed to restore the saved settings?

gnome-settings-daemon applies the defined keys from peripherals/touchpad. the "off" feature isn't in F12, it's not even in upstream gnome yet and has a couple of other dependencies. See https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=594831

if you have a touchpad off key in peripherals/touchpad, I don't know where it comes from. Can't look at gpds right now, I'm too overloaded with other stuff.

There is an "Off" selection in F12 for gpointing-device-settings.  You click on the Up or Down Arrow under Touchpad to select "Off".  This setting does turn the Touchpad off until I reboot.

Note that gpointing-device-settings was just recently added to the repositories for F12.  I first saw it in the update list yesterday, but I had not updated in several days.

I believe this: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=594831 deals with a different issue.  My older T42 ThinkPad does not have a hotkey sequence to disable the TouchPad in any OS that I am aware of.  In Windows, I can disable the TouchPad if I am using the UltraNav driver.  In Windows I have to select or deselect this option from the UltraNav tab in Mouse in Windows Control Panel.

(In reply to comment #8)
> I believe this: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=594831 deals with a
> different issue.  My older T42 ThinkPad does not have a hotkey sequence to
> disable the TouchPad in any OS that I am aware of.  In Windows, I can disable
> the TouchPad if I am using the UltraNav driver.  In Windows I have to select or
> deselect this option from the UltraNav tab in Mouse in Windows Control Panel.  

it's a different issue but this patch introduces a new touchpad_enabled key that disables the touchpad. in GNOME Bug 594831 the trigger to this key is Fn + F8, but you could trigger this key through other means.

(In reply to comment #6)
> gnome-settings-daemon applies the defined keys from peripherals/touchpad. 
Thanks , that's useful

> the
> "off" feature isn't in F12, it's not even in upstream gnome yet and has a
> couple of other dependencies. See
> https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=594831
> 
> if you have a touchpad off key in peripherals/touchpad, I don't know where it
> comes from.

Uhm, maybe from gsynaptics I had previously installed to check gpds properly obsolete it

> Can't look at gpds right now, I'm too overloaded with other stuff.  
np, you help always appreciated

(In reply to comment #10)
> Uhm, maybe from gsynaptics I had previously installed to check gpds properly
> obsolete it

all the control-center/g-s-d keys have schemas. any key you have in peripherals/touchpad without a schema is likely a leftover from something else (and gsynaptics rings a bell. I cleaned out my gconf keys and found a now-useless "off" key in there).

(In reply to comment #11)
> (In reply to comment #10)
> > Uhm, maybe from gsynaptics I had previously installed to check gpds properly
> > obsolete it
> 
> all the control-center/g-s-d keys have schemas. any key you have in
> peripherals/touchpad without a schema is likely a leftover from something else
> (and gsynaptics rings a bell. I cleaned out my gconf keys and found a
> now-useless "off" key in there).  

Maybe I am misreading you, but here is what I experienced.  I installed gsynaptics in F12 soon after installing F12 on my system.  I disabled my touchpad using gsynaptics without issue.

Some days later I saw the update for gpointing-device-settings.  Instead of updating right away, I uninstalled gsynaptics first, then I installed gpointing-device-settings.  I then went in and disabled the touchpad.  Worked fine until I rebooted.  Each time I rebooted, I had to again disable the touchpad in gpointing-device-settings (from System > Preferences).

So the point is, my touchpad can be disabled with gpointing-device-settings, and without gsynaptics installed (although gsynaptics leftovers could exist I suppose) - however this only works until I reboot.

(In reply to comment #12)
> Maybe I am misreading you, but here is what I experienced.  I installed
> gsynaptics in F12 soon after installing F12 on my system.  I disabled my
> touchpad using gsynaptics without issue.

gsynaptics used the keys in peripherals/touchpad, and so does gnome-settings-daemon. hence once you install gsynaptics, you'll get a mix of those by g-s-d and gsynaptics. when you remove gsynaptics, the keys stay around.

gpds uses device-name specific keys, not the ones in peripherals/touchpad.

> Some days later I saw the update for gpointing-device-settings.  Instead of
> updating right away, I uninstalled gsynaptics first, then I installed
> gpointing-device-settings.  I then went in and disabled the touchpad.  Worked
> fine until I rebooted.  Each time I rebooted, I had to again disable the
> touchpad in gpointing-device-settings (from System > Preferences).
> 
> So the point is, my touchpad can be disabled with gpointing-device-settings,
> and without gsynaptics installed (although gsynaptics leftovers could exist I
> suppose) - however this only works until I reboot.  

right, this is a bug in gpds. the key it sets is in peripherals/<insert touchpad name>/off though, so it's easy to confuse with the peripherals/touchpad/off key (the gsynaptics leftover) when debugging. my previous comments were more to clarify the situation with the myriad gconf keys. I'm not doubting the bug itself :)

(In reply to comment #13)
> the key it sets is in peripherals/<insert
> touchpad name>/off though, so it's easy to confuse with the
> peripherals/touchpad/off key (the gsynaptics leftover) when debugging.

Ok, I got that correctly. Now the next question is (sorry for being clueless, I'm just an average monkey-packager): how gpsd is supposed to tell gnome-settings-daemon to read settings from "peripherals/<insert touchpad name>/" and restore the user's preferences at login?

looks like it installs a g-s-d plugin that then takes care of this (judging by the spec file anyway)

On a Lenovo T400 with F12 x86_64, fully updated, same symptom. I have ONLY gpointing-device installed, no gsynaptics.

I can switch off the touchpad but it will onlz stick for the current session. The setting will not even survive a lock screen/login again cycle.

So in its current state the whole gpointing thing is effectively useless.

Jan

I agree with Jan, unfortunately my current Gnome/GTK skills prevent me from finding the culprit here.

I checked the code and the plugin Peter mention is really there; I don't know why it's apparently not doing its job.

Any help appreciated

gpointing-device-settings-1.5.1-1.fc12 has been submitted as an update for Fedora 12.
http://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/gpointing-device-settings-1.5.1-1.fc12

gpointing-device-settings-1.5.1-1.fc12 has been pushed to the Fedora 12 testing repository.  If problems still persist, please make note of it in this bug report.
 If you want to test the update, you can install it with 
 su -c 'yum --enablerepo=updates-testing update gpointing-device-settings'.  You can provide feedback for this update here: http://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/gpointing-device-settings-1.5.1-1.fc12

gpointing-device-settings-1.5.1-1.fc12 has been pushed to the Fedora 12 stable repository.  If problems still persist, please make note of it in this bug report.

I'm still experiencing the same problem with gpointing-device-settings-1.5.1-2.fc13.i686 on Fedora 13 . With the additional pain that when I disable the touchpad in gpointing-device-settings the device doesn't even remain off for the whole session, it always turns itself back on within an hour or so.

I checked in gconf-editor and saw that although it was turned off via 

desktop/gnome/peripherals/<TouchPad device name>/off = 1

it was still being forced back on by

desktop/gnome/peripherals/touchpad/off = 0

This bug is most probably present in Fedora 17 (I only have trackpoint).

gpointing-device-settings-1.5.1-7.fc17.x86_64

Bug 713534 looks similar to this one.

I confirm that it's still present in Fedora 17 and it's related to https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=713534

fwiw, looks like gpointing-device-settings is largely dead, I don't expect this bug to be fixed quickly. http://git.gnome.org/browse/gpointing-device-settings/log/ doesn't show any updates since 2010 (other than translations).

You can disable the touchpad in the gnome mouse & touchpad settings panel, simply flick the on/off switch next to the touchpad (this is F18, not sure about F17, I forgot when this was added. sorry). alternatively:

gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.peripherals.touchpad touchpad-enabled false

Do you have suggestions for other settings without filing a new bug report?

I'm currently using the following script:

xinput set-int-prop "TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint" "Device Accel Profile" 8 3
xinput set-float-prop "TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint" "Device Accel Velocity Scaling" 30
xinput set-int-prop "TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint" "Evdev Wheel Emulation" 8 1
xinput set-int-prop "TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint" "Evdev Wheel Emulation Button" 8 2
xinput set-int-prop "TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint" "Evdev Wheel Emulation Timeout" 16 200
xinput set-int-prop "TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint" "Evdev Wheel Emulation Axes" 8 6 7 4 5

It runs on every login but I would prefer a standard solution in Gnome. And it unfortunately doesn't run when waking from hibernation and the settings are lost during that.

I will file a separate RFE if needed but currently I'm not sure what to ask for.

For toggling [disabling] the TouchPad on my X220, I just have to press Fn + F8.

To enable TrackPoint middle button scrolling I do the following:
http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=280930

(In reply to comment #25)
> Do you have suggestions for other settings without filing a new bug report?
> 
> I'm currently using the following script:
> 
> xinput set-int-prop "TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint" "Device Accel Profile" 8 3
> xinput set-float-prop "TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint" "Device Accel Velocity
> Scaling" 30
> xinput set-int-prop "TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint" "Evdev Wheel Emulation" 8 1
> xinput set-int-prop "TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint" "Evdev Wheel Emulation Button" 8
> 2
> xinput set-int-prop "TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint" "Evdev Wheel Emulation Timeout"
> 16 200
> xinput set-int-prop "TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint" "Evdev Wheel Emulation Axes" 8 6
> 7 4 5
> 
> It runs on every login but I would prefer a standard solution in Gnome. And
> it unfortunately doesn't run when waking from hibernation and the settings
> are lost during that.
> 
> I will file a separate RFE if needed but currently I'm not sure what to ask
> for.

unfortunately many settings are a race between gnome supporting it and gnome providing a UI. gnome doesn't yet handle wheel emulation, so you can set this in an xorg.conf.d snippet that matches on the device name.

The acceleration is partially supported by gnome I think, so you will need to keep running this as a script. http://who-t.blogspot.com.au/2011/03/custom-input-device-configuration-in.html may be helpful though.

I still can't understand how much Gnome fails in this respect. I don't need a GUI, some gsettings value is good enough for me, but of course for a casual user that wants his scrolling, that wouldbe nice too.