Permanently disable point stick

tony

11/25/22, 6:49 PM

I have a faulty point stick on my old Dell latitude E6500 running Ubuntu 20.04. I have a temporary fix where I run xinput --disable *device id*, which works great but I have to run this every time I startup the computer.

I know I could use the Startup Applications to run the command every time the computer starts up but the issue with that is the device id always changes.

example when I run xinput I get this.

⎡ Virtual core pointer                      id=2    [master pointer  (3)]
⎜   ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer                id=4    [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ AlpsPS/2 ALPS DualPoint TouchPad          id=13   [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ AlpsPS/2 ALPS DualPoint Stick             id=12   [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎣ Virtual core keyboard                     id=3    [master keyboard (2)]
    ↳ Virtual core XTEST keyboard               id=5    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Video Bus                                 id=6    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Power Button                              id=7    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Sleep Button                              id=8    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ HID 413c:8157                             id=9    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Dell WMI hotkeys                          id=10   [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ AT Translated Set 2 keyboard              id=11   [slave  keyboard (3)]

and for now the device id I need is 12 so I run xinput --disable 12 which works fine. But when I restart the device id could change to 13 and id 12 would go to the touchpad which I want enabled.

So running xinput --disable 12 every time on startup will either disable the touchpad or the point stick.

I'd like to know if there's another way to permanently disable the point stick or maybe a script which finds only the point stick id and disables it everytime I start up. Thanks

113

1 + 2

mouse

touchpad

command-line

xinput

20.04

steeldriver

11/25/22, 7:24 PM

You should be able to do something like `id=$(xinput list --id-only 'AlpsPS/2 ALPS DualPoint Stick')` to obtain the id

tony

11/25/22, 8:25 PM

This also works, thanks

Score:2

Ubuntu

Organic Marble

11/25/22, 7:34 PM

I wrote a one liner script for the startup to disable a touchpad on one of our computers. The id for the touchpad also changed every boot.

xinput --disable `xinput list | grep Synaptics | awk -F'id=' '{print$2}' | awk -F' ' '{print$1}'`

You can change the Synaptics to Stick and it should work

0 + 1

tony

11/25/22, 8:07 PM

Thanks. this works great

Elon Musk

I sit in a Tesla and translated this thread with Ai:

EN: Permanently disable point stick

TH: ปิดการใช้งานพอยต์สติ๊กอย่างถาวร

RO: Dezactivați permanent point stick

RU: Навсегда отключить джойстик

VI: Vô hiệu hóa vĩnh viễn thanh điểm

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