HP Envy Touch Pad generates false events when lid is closed

ewaller · 2015-05-04 14:38:03

Last month I obtained a new laptop and I am generally delighted. Quad core (8 CPU) i7 /Intel graphics/ 802.11ac / 2TB drive / 12GB RAM / 1920x1080 display ....

... and a touch pad with touch screen; which brings me to my point. To avoid falling into the "XY problem" trap, my issue is that if I configure the machine to stay awake when I close the lid, the touch screen (or display/backlight) interacts with the touch pad (verified by separating them with a ferrite sheet to steer B fields around the touch pad). When I say interacts, the touch pad generates a continuous stream of touches at seemingly random locations (although there may be some structure to the location of the touches -- it is hard to tell). When I open the lid, the desktop has been found to be in some rather entertaining states with strange size windows, dozens of windows for applications that had not been running when I closed the lid, etc... I desire to to be able to close the lid and keep the machine awake so I can access it via ssh and so that I can use it as a Plex media server.

Here I move into 'Y' domain. I think the solution to this is to install ACPI and configure a script to disable the touch screen when the lid closes and to re-enable it when the lid opens. I don't think systemd exposes enough functionality through /etc/systemd/logind.conf which is why I thought of a ACPI. But... I played around with synclient and found I could use TouchpadOff=1 to disable the pad, but Gnome, being Gnome, knows better and would turn the tablet back on in a couple seconds. There is a gconf incantation that turned it off (and another that turned it back on) but it had a side effect that the cursor was not visible when the touch pad was re-enabled although events were generated by the pad. Touching the touch screen causes it to appear.

The synclient solution was the one that works for i3. The gconf spell does nothing for i3.

Before I go off and start writing an ACPI script that tries to figure out which WM is running and taking appropriate action depending on the state, I ask, is this the correct solution or am I barking up the wrong tree?

edit: typos

Last edited by ewaller (2015-05-04 22:17:12)

Arch Linux

#1 2015-05-04 14:38:03

HP Envy Touch Pad generates false events when lid is closed

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