You can get to the "Pointing Devices" config programme without a mouse by using the command "gpointing-device-settings".
I have a related, but apparently separate issue (bug #783641) as hitting the disable touchpad button twice won't restart my pointer. However, it seems that this button issues something like the following to your hardware:
As a workaround, resetting the touchpad should be quicker if you dump the code above into a shell script file, substituting "SynPS/2 Synaptics Touchpad" for whatever the name of your device is (try xinput --list to find out what it's called)
You can get to the "Pointing Devices" config programme without a mouse by using the command "gpointing- device- settings" .
I have a related, but apparently separate issue (bug #783641) as hitting the disable touchpad button twice won't restart my pointer. However, it seems that this button issues something like the following to your hardware:
#! /bin/sh
xinput --set-prop "SynPS/2 Synaptics Touchpad" "Synaptics Off" 0
xinput --set-prop "SynPS/2 Synaptics Touchpad" "Synaptics Off" 1
As a workaround, resetting the touchpad should be quicker if you dump the code above into a shell script file, substituting "SynPS/2 Synaptics Touchpad" for whatever the name of your device is (try xinput --list to find out what it's called)
Hope that helps,
Tom