Warwick Bruce Chapman

Note: I’ve written another post about getting this working in Ubuntu Lucid (10.04).

To prove that I still have geek left in me, this post celebrates me getting my Trackpoint scrolling working in Ubuntu 9.10, though using a Trackpoint instead of the Touchpad probably qualifies me anyway. For those who don’t know what a Trackpoint is, it’s that little “nipple” in the centre of your keyboard.

My Lenovo Thinkpad X301 uses an Alps instead of Synaptics trackpad and thus requires a slightly different configuration to that I found when I Googled this solution.

What is required is to create /etc/hal/fdi/policy/thinkpad.fdi with the following contents and then reboot:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<deviceinfo version="0.2">
 <device>

 <!-- Trackpoint X301 -->
 <match key="info.product" string="DualPoint Stick">
 <merge key="input.x11_options.EmulateWheel" type="string">true</merge>
 <merge key="input.x11_options.EmulateWheelButton" type="string">2</merge>
 <merge key="input.x11_options.EmulateWheelTimeout" type="string">200</merge>
 </match>

 <!-- Touchpad X301 -->
 <match key="input.product" string="AlpsPS/2 ALPS DualPoint TouchPad">
 <merge key="input.x11_driver" type="string">synaptics</merge>
 <merge key="input.x11_options.SHMConfig" type="string">true</merge>
 </match>

 </device>
</deviceinfo>