HOW-TO: Ubuntu Karmic 9.10 on HP TouchSmart tx2-1050el Notebook PC

[henry_k]

I'm using fglrx. It's the 9.11 version from ATI. I just tried updating to 9.12, but it breaks Compiz Blur in a very horrible way.

I've attached the output of lshal, Xorg.0.log, and xorg.conf. This forum software is annoying. It refused to attach unless the '.txt' extension was on the files. Then it sets the textfile max at 19k ... so it had to be a tar.gz archive.

(per henry_k, I'm using whichever firmware is the most recent one from HP's Windows 7 64-bit driver downloads. I think it was released in late October, and nothing has been released since then. I can't check in Windows, as I don't have it installed any more. I'd rather do this without any involvement of Windows).

How do you update drivers for the Windows 7 operating system in Ubuntu and how do you verify what version N-trig driver is installed?

[digitalchemystery]

How do you update drivers for the Windows 7 operating system in Ubuntu and how do you verify what version N-trig driver is installed?

The drivers have no bearing on this -- they're software, and they're OS-specific. The real question is the firmware. Unless you're on an OS which is binary-compatible with Windows and uses the same driver model, any new driver release is essentially worthless. N-Trig's software provided by HP bundles driver updates and firmware updates. I don't quite know enough about the process of direct device access, but I image it would be possible to do a firmware update from Linux after extracting the contents of the provided installer.

[digitalchemystery]

If I recall correctly, 9.10 was the last time I remember the fglrx driver working with rotation. I have not confirmed it yet, but I get the garbled screen currently with 9.11 and a 2.6.32.1 kernel in Gentoo.

From your lshal, it looks like evdev is trying to use event9 and event7 for your N-Trig device, but I am not convinced that it is causing your screen to freeze. Does the screen only freeze when logging in or does it freeze also when you are running applications? I have seen issues where X will restart when fingers are on the screen only when logging in.

What a clusterf*&k.

9.10: rotation works, blur broken
9.11: rotation broken, blur works
9.12: blur horribly, horribly broken, rotation unknown

The device freezes whenever the screen is touched. That's not an incredibly useful feature in a touch device. I originally thought it was only at the login screen, but it happens any time. Brushing a piece of lint off the screen while editing a document ... hope it was saved first...

[Pikachuu]

Ah, this thread rocks. I tried quite a few threads to get my touch working until I came upon this thread. Basically I followed instructions from the front page and managed to get the stylus and touch working but rotation didn't work and after the MagicRotate script triggered my touch and stylus also went haywire. But for some strange reason after a kernel update (or maybe two) everything is working except for my stylus button. The rotation script that is triggered by the screen button doesn't work as well (gives me a error without saying anything else). Yeah.

[digitalchemystery]

I've had a bit more luck, and it came after enabling the proposed and upstream repositories. Not sure if that really had much to do with it -- it's a clean slate compared to where I was. I'm running kernel 2.6.31-17 now.

It's still a bit spotty, and I'm not sure which steps are actually required, but the stylus and touch both kind of work. They no longer freeze the system (I'm blaming that one on patching hid-ntrig). All I had to patch was wacom-0.8.4-4, and I modified 10-linuxwacom.fdi, 11-x11-synaptics.fdi, and xorg.conf.

For about 3 minutes the thing worked *perfectly*. Right click when clicking with the stylus and holding its button worked. Touch also responded perfectly.

Currently, right click doesn't work, and touch only works reliably when dragging ... I can't really 'click' with touch for some reason, but it has worked before.

I just need a little extra help to get right click working and touch to respond correctly. I'll play around with some xorg settings for now, but anyone that has fixed this (and knows how they did) would be very appreciated to speak up!

[dyslexia]

(vaguely remebered this thread, entered a new one: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1374781, sorry)

If I recall correctly, 9.10 was the last time I remember the fglrx driver working with rotation. I have not confirmed it yet, but I get the garbled screen currently with 9.11 and a 2.6.32.1 kernel in Gentoo.

Does rotation on your 9.10 installation also "break" ability to "sleep" ... i.e. sleep works fine until a rotation is used...

[digitalchemystery]

I'd like some help tracking down some remaining issues and one emergent one.

I've installed the patched linuxwacom 0.8.4-4. I've attached an archive with the output of lshal, lshw, lsusb and xorg.conf, Xorg.0.log, 10-linuxwacom.fdi, and 11-x11-synaptics.fdi.

I've lost the ability to log out... the system seems to do some shutting down, and the screen remains black. Same story with shutting down. Restarting works, but log-out/shut-down hang.

My touch and pen are mostly working. I can't figure out how to enable right-click with the pen's button, and touch only works when dragging. Clicks are sporadic and don't seem to register without some dragging.

I just tried the touch toggle script. It detects state properly, but touch remains enabled despite it claiming that it has been disabled. Another piece of the puzzle...

Thanks --

[Ayuthia]

I'd like some help tracking down some remaining issues and one emergent one.

I've installed the patched linuxwacom 0.8.4-4. I've attached an archive with the output of lshal, lshw, lsusb and xorg.conf, Xorg.0.log, 10-linuxwacom.fdi, and 11-x11-synaptics.fdi.

I've lost the ability to log out... the system seems to do some shutting down, and the screen remains black. Same story with shutting down. Restarting works, but log-out/shut-down hang.

My touch and pen are mostly working. I can't figure out how to enable right-click with the pen's button, and touch only works when dragging. Clicks are sporadic and don't seem to register without some dragging.

I just tried the touch toggle script. It detects state properly, but touch remains enabled despite it claiming that it has been disabled. Another piece of the puzzle...

Thanks --

The shutting down issue seems to be a problem with 0.8.4-4. It seems to be fixed in 0.8.5-x series, but the patches for this set has been a moving target because of all the changes that are being applied (this set is still in development stages).

The right-click is set with by setting Button2 to 3 for the stylus in xorg.conf:

        Option "Button2" "3"

I can't remember if the current unpatched kernel version has a problem with the click or not. I just recall that there is one additional patch that is applied in 2.6.32 that is not in the Karmic kernel.

As for the sliding touch, that is an issue with the current kernel. I think that this issue gets fixed in 0.8.5-x series. The patches that I supplied did fix it, but for some reason it appears that you have problems with the patch.

As for the touch toggling, it sounds like another driver is also using the device. You can check xinput to see if there is an additional entry that is assigned to the touchscreen. Xorg.0.log might also tell you something.

[digitalchemystery]

I'll give patching hid-ntrig.ko another shot. I'll also check the latest development release of linuxwacom. I'll post back with how it goes.

I've got the "Button2" "3" option in my xorg, but it doesn't work.

[digitalchemystery]

After rebooting with a patched hid-ntrig.ko, touching the screen locks up the computer. I'll see if I can find out how to patch the 0.8.5-9 version of linuxwacom.

Does anyone have a link for that patch? Does it exist?