Fn+F8 on thinkpad not working (and possibly on asus too)

[Mephisto]

Binary package hint: acpi-support

My thinkpad has Fn+F8 as hotkey for disabling the touchpad on the fly. However, it is not working on an uptodate karmic (I've just upgraded yesterday). I have traced the problem down to this line of code in /etc/acpi/asus-touchpad.sh:
TPSTATUS=`xinput list-props $XINPUTNUM | grep "Synaptics Off" | cut -f4`
running this manually does not do anything. changing this line to:
TPSTATUS=`xinput list-props $XINPUTNUM | grep "Synaptics Off" | cut -f3`
makes it work again.
Since this parsed output from the xinput tool, I suspect this is broken on asus laptops too, as I dont see why the output would be any different there.

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

  TPSTATUS=`xinput list-props $XINPUTNUM | grep "Synaptics Off" | cut -f4`

Except this is not what the asus-touchpad.sh script in the archive does at all! :) The one in the archive is known broken, apparently you have one that's quite a bit closer to functional than what we have in the archive right now -- perhaps you could post that version?

[Mephisto (ferrylandzaat)]

Hmm, now that you mention this, i do recall trying to fix a broken script like this a long time ago, but i assumed it would have been replaced by a version from the karmic package. I will post the script i have on my system tomorrow (im not on my laptop now), but i'm still not sure mine is any different from whats in karmic.

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

I guarantee that the script you've described in your bug report doesn't come from the karmic package. :)

[Mephisto (ferrylandzaat)]

I took a look at the script in the current karmic package, and you were right, i did write this myself, hence why all the old, non-working commented lines are still in there =)
Sorry for reporting a bug that i made myself, but i hope my script helps fix the touchpad button before karmic release, since the old synclient based script doesnt really work...
:)

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

Thanks, I've modified this script a little, and will include a working script in the next upload.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package acpi-support - 0.128

---------------
acpi-support (0.128) karmic; urgency=low

  [ Steve Langasek ]
  * Get laptop-mode-tools out of Suggests. Finally-really-fixes LP: #74683.
  * Fix the touchpad handler to use xinput instead of (unreliable)
    synclient, and add a corresponding Recommends; and call getXconsole so
    we can actually talk to the X server. LP: #447211.
  * new events/asus-f8sv-touchpad: handle another touchpad ACPI event on
    another ASUS model. LP: #218598.
  * lib/power-funcs: adjust getXconsole to work when the tty number is not
    present on the X commandline.

  [ Felix Geyer ]
  * lib/policy-funcs: Recognize KDE4 PowerDevil as a power manager.
    LP: #387750.

 -- Steve Langasek <email address hidden> Mon, 12 Oct 2009 16:49:00 -0700