# How to turn off touchpad leaving USB mouse working?



## Ievgen (Jul 12, 2012)

Hi, 

I've got a minor but very annoying problem, I keep touching the touchpad with my palm while typing the text so this causes the mouse cursor to appear everywhere else but not in the right place. 

I am an ordinary user of Gnome 2, I tried to kill *moused* but my USB mouse also stops working. Could you help me to disable the touchpad but leaving the USB mouse working ? Ideally I would like the magic combination of Fn+F3 to work on my laptop in Gnome like it works in Windows, but it does not 

Thanks.


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## wblock@ (Jul 12, 2012)

There might be an option in the BIOS.

Otherwise, disabling moused(8) in /etc/rc.conf will stop PS/2 mice but leave USB mice working:

```
moused_enable="NO"
```

Disabling HAL for input device detection may also be required.
xorg.conf

```
Section "ServerLayout"
        ...
        Option       "AutoAddDevices" "Off"
EndSection
```


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## tingo (Jul 12, 2012)

Telling what make and model laptop you have might also help.


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## Ievgen (Jul 12, 2012)

wblock@ said:
			
		

> Disabling HAL for input device detection may also be required.
> xorg.conf
> 
> ```
> ...



Thanks, only after this step has been performed the touchpad stopped working.
Disabling *moused* in rc.conf didn't give any results, moreover right now *moused* is continuing working in the background:


```
> ps wwaux | grep moused
root        1988   0.0  0.0  14368   1440  ??  Ss    4:11PM  0:00.24 /usr/sbin/moused -p /dev/ums0 -t auto -I /var/run/moused.ums0.pid
```

Okay, I'm happy now until I have USB mouse nearby, but can I switch the touch pad on/off more easily without having to change xorg.conf ?

Why doesn't a dedicated combination Fn+F3 work ? Who should listen to it ?

My laptop is: DELL Inspiron N5110ServerLayout


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## wblock@ (Jul 12, 2012)

moused(8) is triggered by devd(8) when a USB mouse is attached.  It's run with different options that way, though; see /etc/devd.conf.

The hotkey not working is probably an ACPI thing.  The freebsd-acpi mailing list may know more.


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## Ievgen (Jul 13, 2012)

Thanks a lot.


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