Ubuntu – “Disable touchpad button”: touchpad won’t re-enable

synapticstouchpad

My Acer Timeline has a "Disable touchpad button" which works too well. That is, once I've pressed it, pressing it again won't re-enable the touchpad. I've tried a couple of things like:

gconftool-2 --set --type boolean /desktop/gnome/peripherals/touchpad/touchpad_enabled true

which worked once, but now when I do it again, it doesn't work again…

In fact, I'd like to know how to work out what the "disable touchpad" button is actually doing, and why doing it again isn't fixing the issue.

Best Answer

Just load or unload the psmouse module from kernel

for example:

To disable touchpad:

# rmmod psmouse

To enable touchpad again:

# modprobe psmouse

and voila!

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