Some days ago i realized that my touchpad of the Eee-PC wasn’t working as expected anymore. The left button works but the right button does nothing. First I thought of a problem with the synaptics-modules but after trying different kernels and distros there as no doubt anymore … the button is somehow broken … 
Well, you can imagine how annoying it is to work without the right mouse-button (pasting doesn’t work, fluxbox-menu doesn’t work, browsing with firefox becomes a pain,…).
I searched around to find a possible solution for this problem and discovered 2 very convenient tools: xbindkeys and xautomation.
After compiling and installing the packages, I created a config file called .xbindkeysrc in my home directory with the following content:
"xte 'mouseclick 3'" Menu "xte 'mouseclick 2'" Pause
xte is a tool from xautomation which simulates different X-Events like mouseclicks or keyboard events. After creating the config-file I had to add “xbindkeys &” to my .xinitrc so that the daemon runs whenever X starts.
Now, whenever I want a right-click (button 3), I press the “Menu”-button and if I want a middle-click (button 2) I press the “Pause”-button.
2 Comments
hehe, thats the difference between us. i would start to search for the problem in the hardware, never in the software. maybe because the software is something i doesn’t understand….
Maybe I wrote it down a bit wrong
.
I knew that there were issues with the new synaptics module in the linux-kernel from many cases on the web. That’s why I started to investigate on the software-side.
(by the way: I didn’t want to damage my small Eee-PC. The parts are very small and close together)