does not disable touchpad in vaio vgn-n330fh karmic i386

[hielos]

Binary package hint: touchfreeze

I tried to completely disable the touchpad using the tray icon sub-menu, but it did not work. After doing some research, I found that it can be easily done in karmic doing the following:
($ = command line, i.e. gnome-terminal, Accesories → Terminal)
$ xinput list
<Look for your touchpad>

$ xinput set-int-prop "<the name of your touchpad>" "Device Enabled" 8 0

In my case
$ xinput list
  [...]
"AlpsPS/2 ALPS GlidePoint" id=8 [XExtensionPointer]
 Type is TOUCHPAD
 Num_buttons is 12
 Num_axes is 2
  [...]

$ xinput set-int-prop "AlpsPS/2 ALPS GlidePoint" "Device Enabled" 8 0

To reenable:
$ xinput set-int-prop "AlpsPS/2 ALPS GlidePoint" "Device Enabled" 8 1

(also see: $ man synaptics
 https://wiki.ubuntu.com/X/Config/Input#Input%20Configuration%20with%20HAL
 https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SynapticsTouchpad#hal
 http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=271052&highlight=disable+touchpad+while+typing)

[hielos (hielos-deactivatedaccount)]

Ok, I learnt a little about bash for this, so don't be cruel. I created a little script that allows to switch the enable/disable state of the touchpad. I hope it helps someone. Once you download it, open a terminal and run (in the folder you downloaded it):

chmod 755 altouchpad

7 to let the owner execute, read and write
5 to let the group execute and read
5 to let everyone else to execute and read

then copy it to /usr/bin :

sudo cp altouchpad /usr/bin/

[hielos (hielos-deactivatedaccount)]

HAHA, by the way, to run it, just type altouchpad. It will deactivate or re-activate the touchpad (works on vaio vgn-n330fh, ubuntu karmic i386)