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Date: Thu, 09 Jun 2011 06:50:36 -0400
From: Dave Angel <davea@ieee.org>
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To: harrismh777 <harrismh777@charter.net>
Subject: Re: test_popen
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On 01/-10/-28163 02:59 PM, harrismh777 wrote:
> Looks like my 2.7 test_popen failure is an open issue7671... since Jan
> 2010. Looks like it really does function ok.
>
> At any rate, I was able to test Popen myself today, and it ran fine. I
> needed to write a script that will disable the touch pad on this HP g
> series, because there is no way to do that in the bios. So, in
> gnu/linux, you get the device id list with 'xinput list' and then to
> disable the touch pad for that id, enter this command:
>
> 'xinput set-prop <id#> "Device Enabled" 0'
>
> So, I'm using Popen class to talk to the system through a shell and read
> back the stdout through a pipe, and was able to retrieve the device ids
> with this (in ver 2.7.1) :
>
> from subprocess import PIPE, Popen
> cmd = 'xinput list'
> p = Popen(cmd, shell=True, stdin=PIPE, stdout=PIPE, stderr=PIPE)
> stdout, stderr = p.communicate()
> print stdout
>
> (actually I parsed it with the re module)
>
> The only difference here between 2.7 and 3.2 is that 3.2 gives back a
> b'string' ... otherwise, same same.
>
> I'm parsing the ids listing with the re module and then using Popen to
> issue the command to disable the touch pad. Its a little more
> complicated than that, because I only allow the script to 'work' if it
> finds the id=# for an attached mouse or track-ball... I use the Logitech
> Trackman... otherwise it asks the double question for whether the touch
> pad should be deactivated. So, clicking the icon once disables the pad,
> and clicking it again re-enables it, assuming the trackman is plugged
> in. The trick does not work across login-logout, so the touchpad must be
> disabled in the startup, or else manually every time the user logs in.
>
> When I get the silly thing done I'll post it, in case anyone else is
> interested... there does seem to be a lot of interest on the net for
> disabling the synaptics touch pad... it just gets in the way most of the
> time and isn't very efficient the rest of the time. (but I digress)
>
>
> kind regards,
> m harris
>
>



Thanks for this.  It has already helped me solve a similar problem, and 
in my case the problem/solution is much simpler.  The xinput cmd permits 
you to specify the device name directly, so for my Lenovo, I can just 
use the shell command:

sudo xinput --set-prop --type=int --format=8 "SynPS/2 Synaptics 
TouchPad" "Device Enabled" "0"

I used the information you supplied to modify what already worked on a 
couple of Dells I had.  What I was missing was the correct string for 
the Lenovo.  The Dells called it  "PS/2 Generic Mouse"

DaveA