Can I temporarily disable a xorg input device driver?

[Peter Hutterer]

On Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 11:12:25AM +0200, Bernhard Prell wrote:
> sorry if this has been asked before (I couldn't find an answer yet) or if it's 
> obviously documented somewhere (please direct me there, if so).
> 
> I would like to temporarily disable/pause the elo touchscreen input driver 
> (xf86Elo.c) so that I can calibrate it without competing with the driver for 
> /dev/ttyS0 (it's the serial version).
> 
> Somthing like:
> 
> * Stop the driver from processing data that comes from /dev/ttyS0
> 
> * Do the calibration by interpreting the touch events from /dev/ttyS0 _myself_
> 
> * Resume the xorg driver
> 
> I don't need help for the calibration itself, just for pausing/resuming the 
> input driver. (And I dont't want to do it on the console or something without 
> running X, then it's trivial using "touchcal" or similar)
> 
> Is this somehow possible? Or can I accomplish this somehow differently? (Maybe 
> "redirecting" /dev/ttyS0 temporarily - if such a thing exists.)

    xinput set-prop <device name> "Device Enabled" 0

should do the job. it relies on the driver being implemented correctly, i.e.
releasing the device on DEVICE_OFF and taking it up again on DEVICE_ON. not
sure about this driver in particular though, but the more common drivers do
this correctly.
 
Cheers,
  Peter