Hi William Shu!

 On 2011.09.19 at 16:28:32 -0700, William Shu wrote next:

> I have SL 6.0 installed on a Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex USB drive, which
> I use on various laptops (and desktops). The touchpad is so sensitive
> on some machines and I would like to disable it. At the same time, the
> attached mouse seems to be selectively responsive, notably its left
> button. Looking through the docs etc,a synaptics input driver has been
> installed, but the corresponding xorg.conf file is not in place for me
> to modify. (From a separate thread on nVidia, creating this file is
> NOT automatic in SL 6.)  
> 
> Question 1: If I create the xorg.conf file, would that later create
> problems for me when I switch to other machines--legacy or recent? I
> would not want some of the clashes (no/incorrect video, etc.) I
> experienced with SL 52 on USB sticks.

It will create problems if you switch configuration if you create
full-fledged xorg.conf; for example video card ID on PCI bus creates
problem, and video card driver. However good thing is, you don't have to
create xorg.conf; modern xorg supports small snippets of config files in
which you can tweak only some part of config, and letting everything
else to be autoconfigured. Sadly, this doesn't work for some stuff like
video (if you have to set gamma, you have to put all sections like video
card - display - etc), but it works perfectly for input devices.
So, it's best to be without xorg.conf at all, if your system can handle
it (if you install nvidia binary drivers, you probably must have that
file :( )


Here lies the trouble, however, as SL6 uses Xorg 7.4 which doesn't
support udev-based configuration (it appeared in Xorg 8 and higher)
or config snippets from /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d; it uses older method of
hal-based configuration with config snippets from .fdi files. Check out
this page, here you can find exact solution which should work in SL6.0:
http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/Synaptics_Touchpad/Xorg_7.3

(of course, skip kernel & X11 compiling part :)


So, just create .fdi and customize it with options from manpage to your
liking, you can enable synclient real-time configuration, too. You won't
have to touch anything else or xorg.conf and this file won't interfere
with systems that don't have touchpads at all. This should answer your
second question, too.

> Question 3: Can the touchpad sometimes interfere with the use of the
> mouse? If so, how to minimize interference. the [replacement] mouse I
> use may not be the right quality?

Seems unlikely, I'd suspect faulty mouse, but can never be sure.. Still,
never heard or experienced any kind of interference between mouse,
touchpad and touchscreen - they all seem to work in any combination.


-- 

Vladimir