Description of problem: There is currently no way to change the behaviour of synaptics touchpads (enable/disable) in a security-sane way. The only way is to activate the option "SHMConfig" in the touchpad driver section of xorg.conf. If that is done however any user can switch on and off the touchpad which is a security risk. How reproducible: Use a laptop with touchpad, try to turn it on or off. Actual results: It is not possible until you activate the above mentioned option - then however every user can switch the behaviour without any authentication. Expected results: It should be possible for the user - and only that one - to change the touchpad behaviour. Additional info: Since Fedora 8 comes along with new authentication methods (PolicyKit) I wonder if this problem can be solved with that as well.
See the discussion in http://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2007-November/msg00004.html and followups. People are working on exposing touchpad configuration properly via XInput instead of SHMConfig.
Thanks for the information, I hope that a solution will be available and can be included with Fedora soon.
I don't care much. Either close it upstream, or move it to F9Target as a reminder to look after this.
Closed as an upstream problem.