How to make touchpad/clickpad temporarily disable when typing?

Since my laptop has clickpad that has larger area and more sensitive than common touchpad, I get an annoying behavior of my clickpad; when I type and my thumb or palm accidentally touches or near the clickpad, the cursor will be moved to the position that is pointed by mouse pointer, so that, I will continue to type in the wrong position! I hate this behavior! I have to disable my clickpad when I am typing. There are two methods:

Method 1, I disable my clickpad permanently. I run this script to toggle on/off my clickpad:

#!/bin/bash
#Toggle touchpad
SYNSTATE=$(synclient -l | grep TouchpadOff | awk '{ print $3}')
# change state
if [ $SYNSTATE = 0 ]; then
  synclient touchpadoff=1
elif [ $SYNSTATE = 1 ]; then
  synclient touchpadoff=0
fi

Method 2, I use /usr/bin/syndaemon to disable my clickpad only when I am typing. The steps:

1. Make ~/.xprofile
   

   #!/bin/sh
   # Customize X environment
   #
   # Activate syndaemon for monitoring keyboard activity and disabling # the touchpad when the keyboard is being used.
   /usr/bin/syndaemon -td

2. Add these lines on the top of /usr/bin/startkde (if you use KDE as the default desktop manager) in order to make X server executes ~/.xprofile when it starts.
   

   if [ -r /etc/xprofile ]; then
           source /etc/xprofile
   fi
   if [ -r $HOME/.xprofile ]; then
           source $HOME/.xprofile
   fi

3. Restart X server.

Currently, I use method 2 because I only disable my clickpad temporarily when syndaemon detects keyboard action and resume my clickpad function within 2 seconds after the last key pressed. For more information about syndaemon, type: man syndaemon on your console.

Synaptics-1.4.0 patch for activating right-click function on clickpad

Last month, I have written about how to activate right-click function on clickpad by patching synaptics-1.3.0. In this page, I will show you how to patch synaptics-1.4.0 so that you can use right-click function (also, middle-click). The patch is patch for synaptics-1.3.0 with a few changes. For the modified patch, you can download it from here (gzip compressed). You can follow the instructions from my last note; just change the step 3 with this: copy this file to path-to/x11/patch/ (in my case, copy it to /home/henry/rsync/x11/patch/). The rest will be same. I also put my clickpad.conf on google docs so that you can download it and place it in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/ then restart the X server.

ATI Catalyst Proprietary Display Driver 10.12 & kernel-2.6.38

If you want to use ATI Catalyst Proprietary Display Driver 10.12 on your PC/Laptop that running kernel 2.6.38, you will get error because the installer cannot create fglrx kernel module. You need to patch ATI Catalyst kernel module before you compile it manually. Here is the patch:

--- ./firegl_public.c   2010-12-02 22:28:43.000000000 +0100
+++ ./firegl_public.c.new       2011-01-09 17:40:22.000000000 +0100
@@ -320,7 +320,7 @@
     return firegl_release((KCL_IO_FILE_Handle)filp);
 }

-int ip_firegl_ioctl(struct inode* inode, struct file* filp, unsigned int cmd, unsigned long arg)
+int ip_firegl_ioctl(struct file* filp, unsigned int cmd, unsigned long arg)
 {
     return firegl_ioctl((KCL_IO_FILE_Handle)filp, cmd, arg);
 }
@@ -407,7 +407,7 @@
 #endif
     open:    ip_firegl_open,
     release: ip_firegl_release,
-    ioctl:   ip_firegl_ioctl,
+    unlocked_ioctl:   ip_firegl_ioctl,
     mmap:    ip_firegl_mmap,

     write:   ip_firegl_write,
@@ -840,7 +840,12 @@ static int fglrx_pci_suspend(struct pci_
      * happen much less frequent then without this workaround.
      */
     if (state == PM_EVENT_SUSPEND)
+#if LINUX_VERSION_CODE >= KERNEL_VERSION(2,6,38)
+        console_lock();
+#else
         acquire_console_sem();
+#endif
+

     if (firegl_cail_powerdown(privdev, state))
         ret = -EIO;
@@ -862,7 +867,11 @@ static int fglrx_pci_suspend(struct pci_
     }

     if (state == PM_EVENT_SUSPEND)
+#if LINUX_VERSION_CODE >= KERNEL_VERSION(2,6,38)
+        console_unlock();
+#else
         release_console_sem();
+#endif

     KCL_DEBUG_TRACEOUT(FN_FIREGL_ACPI, ret, NULL); 
    
@@ -886,7 +895,11 @@ static int fglrx_pci_resume(struct pci_d
     if (PMSG_EVENT(pdev->dev.power.power_state) == 0) return 0;

     if (PMSG_EVENT(pdev->dev.power.power_state) == PM_EVENT_SUSPEND)
+#if LINUX_VERSION_CODE >= KERNEL_VERSION(2,6,38)
+        console_lock();
+#else
         acquire_console_sem();
+#endif

 #ifdef FIREGL_USWC_SUPPORT
     // Restore the PAT after resuming from S3 or S4.
@@ -911,7 +924,11 @@ static int fglrx_pci_resume(struct pci_d
     firegl_cail_powerup(privdev);

     if (PMSG_EVENT(pdev->dev.power.power_state) == PM_EVENT_SUSPEND)
+#if LINUX_VERSION_CODE >= KERNEL_VERSION(2,6,38)
+        console_unlock();
+#else
         release_console_sem();
+#endif

     PMSG_EVENT(pdev->dev.power.power_state) = 0;
     KCL_DEBUG_TRACEOUT(FN_FIREGL_ACPI, 0, NULL); 

@@ -5107,7 +5107,7 @@
 unsigned int ATI_API_CALL KAS_Mutex_Initialize(void* hMutex)
 {
     kasMutex_t* mutex_obj = (kasMutex_t*)hMutex;
-    init_MUTEX(&(mutex_obj->mutex));
+    sema_init(&(mutex_obj->mutex),1);
     return 1;
 }

--- ./kcl_ioctl.c       2010-12-02 22:28:43.000000000 +0100
+++ ./kcl_ioctl.c.new   2011-01-09 17:40:22.000000000 +0100
@@ -193,7 +193,7 @@
  */
 void* ATI_API_CALL KCL_IOCTL_AllocUserSpace32(long size)
 {
-    void __user *ret = COMPAT_ALLOC_USER_SPACE(size);
+    void __user *ret = arch_compat_alloc_user_space(size);

     /* prevent stack overflow */
     if (!access_ok(VERIFY_WRITE, ret, size))

Save this patch to file and follow the instructions that I have written on http://henryhermawan.blogspot.com/2011/02/problem-when-using-ati-catalyst.html.

Reference: http://groups.google.com/group/linux.debian.bugs.dist/browse_thread/thread/3b716dfe326fef23?pli=1

dmesg: operation not permitted as user

After upgrading to Slackware64 13.37, I cannot access the kernel syslog (dmesg) as user. This problem is caused by kernel (2.6.37.3) setting in Slackware (see pictures below).

There are 2 solutions, you are freely to choose one of them.

Solution 1: add these lines on your rc.local:

if [ -r /proc/sys/kernel/dmesg_restrict ]; then
    if [ $(cat /proc/sys/kernel/dmesg_restrict) = 1 ]; then
        echo 0 > /proc/sys/kernel/dmesg_restrict
    fi
fi

Solution 2: change the correspond kernel setting (restrict unprivileged access to the kernel syslog) to "N" then recompile the kernel.