T61p/Debian/Gnome/Gsynaptics HOWTO

gsynaptics gives you a nice little GUI in gnome to control the options on your synaptics touchpad, like the one my T61p came with. It’s easy to set up on a default debian install, you just need to add a few stanazas to your xorg.conf

Here’s the edits I needed from a default install xorg.conf:

1. Make a backup of your current xorg.conf
2. Remove the “Generic Mouse” section. You don’t need it anymore.
3. Add a section for your touchpad like so:

   Section "InputDevice"
     Identifier  "Synaptics Touchpad"
     Driver      "synaptics"
     Option      "SendCoreEvents"  "true"
     Option      "Protocol"        "auto-dev"
     Option      "Device"          "/dev/psaux"
     Option      "SHMConfig"       "true"
   EndSection
   

4. And add a line in your “ServerLayout” section referencing your new synaptics section. I didn’t have a ServerLayout section so I had to add one, mine looks like this:

   Section "ServerLayout"
     Identifier  "Default Layout"
     Screen      "Default Screen"
     InputDevice "Generic Keyboard"
     InputDevice "Synaptics Touchpad"
   EndSection
   

Now save everything you’re doing and then restart X11 by hitting cntrl-alt-backspace. If X won’t start back up, you can hit cntrl-alt-f1 and log in at a command prompt, restore your xorg.conf from the backup you made earlier, then run /etc/init.d/gdm restart.

In the event that things just aren’t working, your friend is /var/log/Xorg.0.log. That log file contains the results of your x-server’s parsing of your xorg.conf.