Synaptics Touchpad

If you need to access the synaptics touchpad driver shared memory, on the new /etc/X11/xorg.conf file. You know the ones that have almost nothing in them. This works on Kubuntu 9.04 Jaunty your mileage may differ.

This is often needed when you want to turn off the annoying touch pad when you are editing files and your finger brushes against the pad and you start typing in places you weren't expecting.

Open a new file as shown below:

$ sudo nano /etc/hal/fdi/policy/shmconfig.fdi

Then copy these lines and drop them into the empty file you just created.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<deviceinfo version="0.2">
  <device>
    <match key="input.x11_driver" string="synaptics">
      <merge key="input.x11_options.SHMConfig" type="string">True</merge>
    </match>
  </device>
</deviceinfo>

This is a link to the source of the above which gives details for more systems than I have shown above.