Comment 11 for bug 288332

Thanks for the tips captaintrav. Let me clarify the problem. My problem when I upgraded to Intrepid was that all the xorg.conf fixes (and synclient equivalents) that I had been using for years (and that you list above) ceased to work. I edited xorg.conf to allow shared memory so I could set these things through synclient but that didn't have any effect (except to make the error message go away). (I for one do not like the idea of editing and restarting X every time I want to tweak the acceleration of my touchpad, which is why I prefer synclient over editing xorg.conf.)

Recently, I once again removed xorg.conf altogether and (perhaps due to some update in the interim?) synclient is now able to regulate the touchpad. It's still not without its hitches but at least the basic stuff is working again. The key for me was to delete xorg.conf and instead to edit /etc/hal/fdi/policy/shmconfig.fdi . This didn't initially work, but now it is working. Not sure what changed.