Re: [gentoo-user] Synaptics and HAL Device Information Files

[Mike Edenfield]

On 5/26/2009 5:58 AM, Redouane Boumghar wrote:

> First of all where can I find information about the file names of FDI ?
> NUMBER-NAME-NAME.fdi
>
> Where are the specification of the nomenclature ?
> I have found different names possible :
> 11-x11-synaptics.fdi
> 99-x11-synaptics.fdi
 >
> Why the donkey would it be 99 or 11 ?

Since (as I see below) you've added "hal" to your USE flags for the 
xf86-input-synaptics driver, you should already have the synaptics HAL 
data installed -- the post-ebuild messages would tell you where those 
are.  Currently, the stock HAL rules are installed into

/usr/share/hal/fdi/policy/10osvendor/11-x11-synaptics.fdi


The reason it's number 11 is because the synaptics Xorg driver exposes 
itself to HAL in a way that also looks like a mouse, so it matches all 
on the HAL rules for standard pointer device behavior.  The synaptics 
rules need to override the normal rules, which are in the file 
10-x11-pointer.fdi, so the synaptics rules go into 11-x11-synaptics.fdi 
and get loaded second.

The file named 99- is most likely a suggestion from someone for a local 
customization to the policy, since it will be loaded after everything 
else.  Since the synaptics rules are included in the base HAL policy 
now, there's no need for the 99- file.


> The thing is that I don't know how to match my touchpad with the
> fdi policy or that I have another unknown problem.

You should not have to do anything to get your touchpad recognized by 
HAL as a synaptics device, since you already have the HAL policy file 
locally.  You can use lshal(1) to ask HAL what devices it found, for 
example:

lshal | grep -9 input.x11_driver

You should see a result which includes:

input.x11_driver = 'synaptics'

If you back up a few lines you will see the info.capabilities set, which 
should include items like "input", "input.mouse", and input.touchpad.

The default settings are in the FDI file in /usr/share, which will also 
show you how to override any of those settings.  Basically, anything 
that used to be an xorg.conf option can be set using an 
"input.x11_options.OPTIONNAME" key.  For example, to turn on SHMConfig 
so you can use the synaptics utilities:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<deviceinfo version="0.2">
   <device>
     <match key="info.capabilities" contains="input.touchpad">
       <merge key="input.x11_options.SHMConfig" type="string">On</merge>
     </match>
   </device>
</deviceinfo>

Put this in an FDI file inside your /etc/hal/fdi/policy folder, such as

/etc/hal/fdi/policy/10osvendor/11-x11-synaptics.fdi