[Swlug] Dsabling the trackpad

[Daniel Morris]

Perhaps you could talk him through downloading and installing TeamViewer?
I've used this supporting non-technical family. Once he initiates a
session, and gives you the security code over the phone, you can setup ssh,
and port forwarding at the router for the future. He'll probably have a
dynamic IP, so you'll need to configure something like No-IP at the router
too.

Beware that router updates will often nuke your working setup, and then
you'll be back to reinstalling TeamViewer over the phone.

I'd install TeamViewer on two machines at your end first, to suss out the
prompts and non- commercial declaration, they've had some bad press
recently for being more stringent.

Also TeamViewer and other remote login apps are a favourite of scammers, so
you ought to have a warning chat with your Dad - mine initiated a secure
channel, on another device, to check I hadn't changed phone numbers this
week....

Daniel

On Sat, 13 Jul 2024, 02:42 Rhys Sage via Swlug, <swlug at mailman.lug.org.uk>
wrote:

> Sadly, I did not set up SSH as I was not expecting to have to use it. I
> have used SSH to access a Raspberry Pi on my home network but never
> anything over the internet. I'm not quite sure how that would work. It's
> such a shame it's not as easy as it is on my Asus to turn the trackpad off.
> Sod's law, of course - I like my trackpad and use it but can turn it on and
> off easily. He can't cope with a trackpad and can't turn it off easily. I
> sent him the script instructions but I'm not even sure he can copy and
> paste.
>
> Rhys Sage
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Friday 12 July 2024 at 19:11:47 GMT-4, Jonathan Marsden <
> jmarsden at fastmail.fm> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> Rhys,
>
> Assuming you have SSH or similar secure remote shell access to his machine
> (when it is powered on and connected to the Internet), can't you use that
> access to put the commands needed into a script that runs at boot time, or
> into a script that his user account runs at login?
>
> If you left the UK without setting up a way for you to do remote
> support... that was probably a mistake.  Does anyone in the group (that you
> trust!) live near your Dad, so they could go see him and create the needed
> little shell script?
>
> Jonathan
> --
>   Jonathan Marsden
>   Pastor, Deer Park Baptist Church, Tenby
>   jmarsden at fastmail.fm
>
> On Fri, 12 Jul 2024, at 20:42, Rhys Sage via Swlug wrote:
> > I set up dad's laptop to use Debian 12. What I didn't know at the time
> > was that he has problems with the trackpad and prefers to use a mouse.
> > He's using an older HP laptop.
> >
> > On my Asus I can just press Fn + F9 to turn the trackpad on or off. I
> > did find a way of doing it via the terminal but dad really shouldn't be
> > let loose on terminal. He doesn't understand computers at all. I gave
> > him the terminal commands but it probably won't work. Is there a
> > simpler way of doing it via just keyboard shortcuts?
> >
> > It doesn't help that I'm back in the US again.
> >
> > Rhys Sage
>
> >
> > --
> > Swlug mailing list
> > Swlug at mailman.lug.org.uk
> > https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/swlug
>
>
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