enabling synaptic touchpad tap ability for fedora 9

Applicable to Fedora Versions

• Fedora 9
  

Requirements

1. Fedora 9 installation
2. Knowledge of becoming root and/or the su - command
3. Installing RPM packages
4. Using vim (or other editor) to modify files
   

Following the Steps

the synaptics package with fedora 9 is missing the ability to tap (simulate mouse click).  if you using synaptic package 0.14.6-7 or less, then this patch will work.  issue the following to find out what packages you are using:

[mock@sidestep ~]$ rpm -qa | grep synaptic
synaptics-0.14.6-7.fc9.i386
libsynaptics-0.14.6c-3.fc9.i386

edit your xorg.conf file:

su -c 'vim /etc/X11/xorg.conf'

add this line to your ServerLayout section:

InputDevice    "Synaptics"

and add this section:

Section "InputDevice"
	Identifier	"Synaptics"
	Driver		"synaptics"
	Option		"Device" "/dev/input/mice"
	Option		"Protocol" "auto-dev"
	Option		"Emulate3Buttons" "yes"
	Option		"SHMConfig" "true"
	Option		"SendCoreEvents" "true"
	Option		"TapButton1" "1"
	Option		"TapButton2" "2"
EndSection

make sure the synaptics and libsynaptics packages are loaded:

rpm -qa | grep synaptic

you will also need to install the gsynaptics package if it is not already installed.

yum install gsynaptics

restart X and you should be golden.

Alternatives

if you are an Eee PC owner, the above information might not work for you.   the gsynaptics won't initialize.  check here for a possible solution for that laptop:  http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/EeePc#TouchPad_tap_fix.

Notes

zcat reports that tap works after changing xorg.conf but resuming from sleep means it's gone again because xorg 1.5 uses HAL to reinitialize devices.  reference this thread in the fedora forums in the meantime:  http://fedoraforum.org/forum/showthread.php?t=194784.

References

these fixes can be referenced at bugzilla.

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=439386

• the basic Synaptics section of the xorg.conf file was found referenced in bug report 439386

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=437609

• the TapButton references are found in bug report 437609
• scroll to the bottom of bug report 437609 to find the reference to the synaptics-0.14.6-8 package

More Help

if you run into problems, come to #fedora on irc.freenode.net.