syndaemon "-t" option fails, in turn making touchpad disable-while-typing not work

[Christopher Barrington-Leigh]

I'm on Lenovo T450s, but there are reports of others having the same problem that touchpad disabling, which is no longer an explicit option, is not working. This leads to data loss and frustration when typing/editing, etc.

With default settings, I find that syndaemon has been run with the following options:

$ ps aux|grep synd
meuser 2798 0.0 0.0 22504 2784 ? S Jul15 0:02 syndaemon -i 1.0 -t -K -R

However, this fails. My palms/ base of my thumbs, in particular, hover over my touchpad while typing and frequently cause unintended motion AND mouse-click events, highlighting and deleting text, switching windows, etc.

The diagnosis seems to be (http://askubuntu.com/questions/299868/disable-touchpad-while-typing-does-not-work) that the -t option is not working, ie mouse clicks are still allowed when it is called.

The following two commands are a work-around for me under 16.04 on this hardware. They result in perfect touchpad disabling while typing:

killall syndaemon
syndaemon -i 1 -KRd

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 16.04
Package: xserver-xorg-input-synaptics 1.8.2-1ubuntu3
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.4.0-31.50-generic 4.4.13
Uname: Linux 4.4.0-31-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.20.1-0ubuntu2.1
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: Unity
Date: Sun Jul 17 12:17:26 2016
DistUpgraded: 2016-05-24 18:07:00,267 DEBUG icon theme changed, re-reading
DistroCodename: xenial
DistroVariant: ubuntu
EcryptfsInUse: Yes
InstallationDate: Installed on 2016-02-12 (155 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 15.10 "Wily Werewolf" - Release amd64 (20151021)
MachineType: LENOVO 20BXCTO1WW
ProcKernelCmdLine: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-4.4.0-31-generic.efi.signed root=UUID=ea2fb511-8d62-4b96-bdaa-4b3f7bf79cc6 ro noprompt quiet splash vt.handoff=7
SourcePackage: xserver-xorg-input-synaptics
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to xenial on 2016-05-24 (53 days ago)
dmi.bios.date: 11/06/2015
dmi.bios.vendor: LENOVO
dmi.bios.version: JBET54WW (1.19 )
dmi.board.asset.tag: Not Available
dmi.board.name: 20BXCTO1WW
dmi.board.vendor: LENOVO
dmi.board.version: SDK0J40697 WIN
dmi.chassis.asset.tag: No Asset Information
dmi.chassis.type: 10
dmi.chassis.vendor: LENOVO
dmi.chassis.version: None
dmi.modalias: dmi:bvnLENOVO:bvrJBET54WW(1.19):bd11/06/2015:svnLENOVO:pn20BXCTO1WW:pvrThinkPadT450s:rvnLENOVO:rn20BXCTO1WW:rvrSDK0J40697WIN:cvnLENOVO:ct10:cvrNone:
dmi.product.name: 20BXCTO1WW
dmi.product.version: ThinkPad T450s
dmi.sys.vendor: LENOVO
version.compiz: compiz 1:0.9.12.2+16.04.20160526-0ubuntu1
version.ia32-libs: ia32-libs N/A
version.libdrm2: libdrm2 2.4.67-1ubuntu0.16.04.1
version.libgl1-mesa-dri: libgl1-mesa-dri 11.2.0-1ubuntu2
version.libgl1-mesa-dri-experimental: libgl1-mesa-dri-experimental N/A
version.libgl1-mesa-glx: libgl1-mesa-glx 11.2.0-1ubuntu2
version.xserver-xorg-core: xserver-xorg-core 2:1.18.3-1ubuntu2.2
version.xserver-xorg-input-evdev: xserver-xorg-input-evdev 1:2.10.1-1ubuntu2
version.xserver-xorg-video-ati: xserver-xorg-video-ati 1:7.7.0-1
version.xserver-xorg-video-intel: xserver-xorg-video-intel 2:2.99.917+git20160325-1ubuntu1
version.xserver-xorg-video-nouveau: xserver-xorg-video-nouveau 1:1.0.12-1build2
xserver.bootTime: Fri Jul 15 21:21:11 2016
xserver.configfile: default
xserver.logfile: /var/log/Xorg.0.log
xserver.outputs:
 product id 20104
 vendor GSM
xserver.version: 2:1.18.3-1ubuntu2.2

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.