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A while back I got some help in taking control of the clickable area of my laptop's touchpad.

To make the solution permanent, the answer suggests I add a one line entry to my computer's xorg.conf file. My computer does not seem to have one, though.

Can I just make one? Can I just add in the one suggested line, or do I need anything else to make the file valid? Where do I put it?

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Questioner
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    Just to solve your misunderstanding: that answer is for an old version where we still had 1 xorg.conf. We now have a version where xorg is divided into seperate files. – Rinzwind Jan 28 '15 at 10:09

2 Answers2

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The standard way would be to copy the /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-synaptics.conf into /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d and calling it for example 51-mysinaptics.conf (so that it will be read after the standard one) --- then read it and edit accordingly.

In my version, around the start, there is: 

Section "InputClass"
        Identifier "touchpad catchall"
        Driver "synaptics"
        MatchIsTouchpad "on"
# This option is recommend on all Linux systems using evdev, but cannot be
# enabled by default. See the following link for details:
# http://who-t.blogspot.com/2010/11/how-to-ignore-configuration-errors.html
      MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*"
EndSection

(Notice that someone changed it without changing the comment --- that's the danger of the comments). I would try to add it here and restart X.

The details about startup configuration can be found with man xorg.conf.d; the interesting part here is:

Additional configuration files are searched for in the following direc‐ tories when the server is started as a normal user:

       /etc/X11/<cmdline>
       /etc/X11/<cmdline>
       /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d
       /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d

and 

Finally, configuration files will also be searched for  in  directories
   reserved for system use. These are to separate configuration files from
   the vendor or 3rd party packages from those  of  local  administration.
   These files are found in the following directories:

   /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d
   /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d

Order: It is not really clear the order of reading/apply configuration; I suppose that higher numbered "scripts" (like /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/51-synaptics-quirks.conf) supersedes lower ones (like /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-evdev.conf), but I am not sure which one will be the selected one between

  1. /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-wacom.conf and
  2. /etc/X11/xorg.conf/50-wacom.conf

or if all the /etc/X11/xorg.conf/ will supersede all the /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/ configurations --- the manual is not clear for me. You are very welcome to edit this part if you have an authoritative answer!

Rmano
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  • Thank you for this response. I don't seem to have a directory or file called /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d. I only have an /etc/X11/ directory. So where should I put the new file? – Questioner Feb 01 '15 at 07:16
  • I think that in this case you'll need to create one --- sudo mkdir -m755 /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/ should be ok. – Rmano Feb 01 '15 at 11:33
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In your console, if you do 'man xorg' you'll find :

-configure
          When this option is specified, the Xorg server loads all video driver
          modules, probes for available hardware, and writes out an initial xorg.
          conf(5) file based on what  was detected.  This option currently has
          some problems on some platforms, but in most cases it is a good way to 
          bootstrap the configuration process.  This option is only available 
          when the server is run as root (i.e, with real-uid 0).
Zanna
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Salix
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