Disabling an (/dev/inputX) input device on Ubuntu(/Linux)

Question

My story: I have a laptop with a touchscreen, which is a bit faulty. It jumps the cursor occasionally to one point of the screen. It's annoying, but I managed to find the correct input.

/dev/input/mouse1 < this is the one I should permanently disable in Linux.

How can I do it on Ubuntu 11.04? (Saying the version because the correct answer may vary due to hal/evdev/whatevertheychangestuffdownto software.)

Solution

Adding something like this to /etc/X11/xorg.conf should work:

Section "InputClass"
   Identifier         "disable broken device"
   MatchIsTouchscreen "on"
   MatchProduct       "full product name from 'xinput list'"
   Option             "Ignore" "on"
EndSection

For more matches see http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Input_device_configuration#InputClasses .

Comments

[Apache]

Nice, gonna try it ASAP!

[user1686]

It's generally not recommended to match on specific device paths, as the ordering may change on reboot. MatchIsTouchscreen "on" possibly along with MatchProduct "full product name from 'xinput list'" would be somewhat better.

[Apache]

Strange. @Grawity - Your version works, the "MatchDevicePath" fails for some reason. Thanks, both of you!

[Ambroz Bizjak]

Thanks @grawity, I changed according to to your suggestion.