Making changes persistent

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Hi guys,

I am running Gnome and I am trying to change the behaviour of the Touchpad in my laptop. The idea is change the default three fingers for secondary button for two fingers and activate palm detection. I can achieve that so far with:

synclient TapButton2=3

synclient PalmDetect=1

The problem is changes work through the terminal but they are not persistent. When the laptop is rebooted I lost all the changes. How can I make them persistent?

Cheers.

@sophos1977 I am sure there is an easier / better way, but you could make a small script and then go to the session / startup settings of your DE and set it to run that script at login. I don’t use gnome, but can you edit those settings directly from the mouse and touchpad settings?

@Shryp said in Making changes persistent:

@sophos1977 I am sure there is an easier / better way, but you could make a small script and then go to the session / startup settings of your DE and set it to run that script at login. I don’t use gnome, but can you edit those settings directly from the mouse and touchpad settings?

@Shryp Thanks for answering. I need to check how to do so in Gnome.

@judd How you can see in your own image there are no options for Touchpad. There is a workaround which fixes that deleting the synaptic file but after all there is no option for palm detection either. I think is maybe easier to use the option of the script.

Cheers.

Hi again guys,

I have created a small script with only two bash lines for the palm detection and change the secondary button. I have made it executable and copy it to ./configure/autostart but I did something obviously wrong because when I reboot the laptop the script doesn’t execute. Any idea will be really welcome.

Cheers.

@sophos1977
Did you add #!/bin/bash at the beggining of the file?
If not, you’ll need to add the line above.
Add please your script here (if is short) for us to take a look.

@fernandomaroto Yep, this is the script that I am using:

#!/bin/bash

synclient PalmDetect=1

synclient TapButton2=3

The fact is if I execute the script into the bash works perfectly.

Thanks.

.config/autostart/NAMEXY.desktop

should be the place for a .desktop file what do start your skript on startup of Gnome
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Desktop_entries

[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Exec=sh "/where/your/skript/is/saved/skript.sh"
Hidden=true
NoDisplay=true
X-GNOME-Autostart-enabled=true
Name[en_IN]=starterXY
Name=starterXY
Comment[en_IN]=
Comment=

Or use Arronax [yaourt -S arronax]

@joekamprad Thanks for the suggestions. I put the script in ./config/autostart but the script doesn´t execute automatically. Should be necessarily a .desktop file or it is enough with the script?

Cheers.

I never needed to use a .desktop file, but i usually use the desktop’s startup app. Try to set through Gnome config, although i think your script should be working already.

i think gnome will only autostart the skript over a .desktop file!
Because the procedure who reads the ./config/autostart/ only is powered to read files in .desktop scheme…
Gnome is like that in many ways

@joekamprad ok,i didn’t know.

Hi there,

I created a .desktop file with the following content:

[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Exec=sh "/home/user/Documents/Touchpad Script.sh"
Hidden=true
NoDisplay=true
X-GNOME-Autostart-enabled=true
Name=Touchpad.desktop	
Comment=
Name[en_GB]=Touchpad.desktop

Again, I can execute the file manually but it doesn’t start automatically after login.

No idea what is going on guys.

Cheers.

@sophos1977 Ok, Did you put the .desktop at .config/autostart folder?

/home/user/Documents/Touchpad Script.sh

need to be something like:

/home/user/Documents/Touchpad-Script.sh

and:

Name=Touchpad-Script
Comment=
Name[en_GB]=Touchpad-Script

Name of the program the starter aka .desktop file starts…

@fernandomaroto Yes, the .desktop file is in .config/autostart but doesn´t start automatically after log in.

try this one

[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Name=Touchpad Script
X-GNOME-Autostart-enabled=true
Exec=/home/user/Documents/Touchpad-Script.sh

and make shure the Desktop Entry do NOT need to be executable, only your skript!

@sophos1977 Can this not be achieved using the xorg.conf file for the touchpad? (ie. the 50-synaptics.conf). Reference libinput wiki on arch or the older method with synaptics

Did you try with libinput-git on AUR?

https://forum.antergos.com/topic/6279/configuring-touchpad-settings-libinput-on-wayland