HOW TO: Set up the HP TX2z and Dell XT & XT2 (N-trig digitizer) in Ubuntu

[chymian]

hey everybody,
for the most parts, I've got an friend's XT working.
the biggest pbl. at the moment is, that with the pen, one cannot reach the border of screen on the left, right and bottom. there is a 1,5 cm "deadzone", which cannot be reached with the pen. the curser jumpes back towards the middle, if you try to move it i.e. to the corner.

I tried to read the firmware-ver. with no success. the calib.sh/frimware runs, but returns only zeros for firmware.
BIOS is A09.

it did work under windows.
does anybody has a clue, where to start?.

any help appreciated,
TIA
günter

[Favux]

Hi Günter,

Welcome to Ubuntu forums!


Sounds like you need to specify the coordinates. How you do that depends on the X driver the pen is on. It should be the Wacom driver. Check with:

xsetwacom list

in terminal. Or you could check the Xorg.0.log in /var/log. As I recall the X coordinates should be around 0 and 9600, with Y's 0 and 7200. If it is on Wacom the you can use a xsetwacom startup script, xorg.conf.d, or the xorg.conf. See: http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawik...le=Calibration from: http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawik...Category:HOWTO

If it is on evdev and you wanted to keep it there for some reason you'll need to use different commands or options. Which release of Ubuntu are using using?

[ntzrmtthihu777]

Any news on this for raring? I just got ahold of one, its a sweet little device, lol.

[Favux]

Hi ntzrmtthihu777,

You appear to be the first person clearly reporting on Raring so you get to be the pioneer!

The stylus should be on the Wacom X driver and should work out of the box. Does it?

Multi-touch will work through the evdev X driver, if it is working. There are a few issues that may explain why it isn't working.

BIOS updates pretty much have to be done through Windows, so if you don't have Windows partition you pretty much are stuck with what you have. There is some stuff out there about updating BIOS with linux but doing that sounds chancy and scary.

Is there any reaction to touch? It is possible that evdev is is having a problem with an input event being available for single touch and another for multitouch. Run xinput list in a terminal and post the output. That should tell you what event nodes are available. It also gave us a rough idea of what version of the kernel driver was working back in the day. I don't know the status of that but I'm assuming the current ntrig.ko is roughly equivalent to Rafi's last version. If not I do not know if his last ntrig.c would compile on Raring's kernel.

Multitouch will also be influenced by whether or not you are using Unity or another Desktop, so that needs to be specified. I have some notes on multitouch in posts 1678 and 1680 on the previous page. And then my summary of my experiments as of a few months ago are here: http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawik...tle=Multitouch If you go through that wiki page you'll see Unity while giving you multitouch causes a few issues. Unfortunately some like the lack of customization are by design. If a Desktop other than Unity then for Raring you probably need to see if Touchegg is installed and working.

[ntzrmtthihu777]

Hi ntzrmtthihu777,

You appear to be the first person clearly reporting on Raring so you get to be the pioneer!

The stylus should be on the Wacom X driver and should work out of the box. Does it?

Yep, that functions well right out of box

Multi-touch will work through the evdev X driver, if it is working. There are a few issues that may explain why it isn't working.

Yes, I had multitouch functioning with touchegg, actually. But since I switched window managers to compiz its not, I may have to fall back to metacity... But I like mah docky T_T

BIOS updates pretty much have to be done through Windows, so if you don't have Windows partition you pretty much are stuck with what you have. There is some stuff out there about updating BIOS with linux but doing that sounds chancy and scary.

Actually I updated the bios to A10 via linux rather safely (I can provide info), but after I installed Win7Ultx64 to update the N-Trig firmware (this was the real mystery to me, I had no clue how it would be done in linux. But, it seems the only way to do it is via windows atm) I updated the bios via a windows exe to A15

Is there any reaction to touch? It is possible that evdev is is having a problem with an input event being available for single touch and another for multitouch. Run xinput list in a terminal and post the output. That should tell you what event nodes are available. It also gave us a rough idea of what version of the kernel driver was working back in the day. I don't know the status of that but I'm assuming the current ntrig.ko is roughly equivalent to Rafi's last version. If not I do not know if his last ntrig.c would compile on Raring's kernel.

Yeah, I had touch reaction while using Unity, and while using gnome-panel (my preferred de along with xfce) with metacity, but as I said, switching to compiz borked touchegg.
[spoiler=xinput list]

⎡ Virtual core pointer                        id=2    [master pointer  (3)]
⎜   ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer                  id=4    [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ N-Trig Pen stylus                           id=10    [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ PS/2 Generic Mouse                          id=13    [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ N-Trig Pen eraser                           id=15    [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ N-Trig Pen pad                              id=16    [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ N-Trig MultiTouch                           id=11    [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎣ Virtual core keyboard                       id=3    [master keyboard (2)]
    ↳ Virtual core XTEST keyboard                 id=5    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Video Bus                                   id=6    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Power Button                                id=7    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Sleep Button                                id=8    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ HID 413c:8161                               id=9    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ AT Translated Set 2 keyboard                id=12    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Dell WMI hotkeys                            id=14    [slave  keyboard (3)]

[/spoiler]

Multitouch will also be influenced by whether or not you are using Unity or another Desktop, so that needs to be specified. I have some notes on multitouch in posts 1678 and 1680 on the previous page. And then my summary of my experiments as of a few months ago are here: http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawik...tle=Multitouch If you go through that wiki page you'll see Unity while giving you multitouch causes a few issues. Unfortunately some like the lack of customization are by design. If a Desktop other than Unity then for Raring you probably need to see if Touchegg is installed and working.

Yeah, I gave unity a try, hated it (as I did when it first came out XD), hell even patched the source code to remove its hard-coded touch scheme and used it with touchegg, got tired of the hangups and lag so I installed gnome-panel and purged unity from my system. But, it seems touchegg doesn't like compiz as I said, so I'll have to figure that out or just go back to metacity (my poor docky will suffer, though T_T) Also, for whatever reason the trackpad is reported as a ps/2 mouse, so I can't setup the usual trackpad goodies (edge scrolling, two-finger scrolling, etc), any info on that? I've filed a bug, still have to test against the saucy dev iso to complete the report but as I just moved I'll have to do a bit of fnagling before I can test that.

[Favux]

Dell XT2
BIOS: A15
Firmware: ?
N-Trig kernel driver: default driver included in Ubuntu's 3.8 kernel for Raring

I believe touchegg is suppose to be compiz compatible. For e.g. the blurb on the 0.2 release mentions one of the bugs fixed was "Desktop actions with Compiz". It appears it's necessary to specify the version of touchegg you're using and then check if a bug report has been filed.

It's interesting you are only seeing the N-trig multitouch node "N-Trig MultiTouch", instead of it and "N-Trig Touch" (I think that's the right name). I wonder why that is. Kernel driver and/or BIOS and/or Firmware?

The eraser and pad are spurious and the only valid Pen node is the one with stylus appended. That's the Wacom X driver doing that. You probably already figured that out.

[ntzrmtthihu777]

Dell XT2
BIOS: A15
Firmware: ?
N-Trig kernel driver: default driver included in Ubuntu's 3.8 kernel for Raring

I believe touchegg is suppose to be compiz compatible. For e.g. the blurb on the 0.2 release mentions one of the bugs fixed was "Desktop actions with Compiz". It appears it's necessary to specify the version of touchegg you're using and then check if a bug report has been filed.

It's interesting you are only seeing the N-trig multitouch node "N-Trig MultiTouch", instead of it and "N-Trig Touch" (I think that's the right name). I wonder why that is. Kernel driver and/or BIOS and/or Firmware?

The eraser and pad are spurious and the only valid Pen node is the one with stylus appended. That's the Wacom X driver doing that. You probably already figured that out.

Greetings again, I've since jumped ship for Arch linux, but I figure I can still provide infos that may be of used. I seem to have touchegg working very well under arch linux with OpenBox/LXDE, although it seems the Touchegg-GCE (gui config) is still kinda derpy. (I also managed to get compositing under metacity to work [metacity --replace -c], so docky looked good; I've since done the same with the LXDE session).

According to firmware_version.sh I have
firmware version: 0c002508 afe10000
mode: 0d030000
Is this current? And is there any effort to allow for firmware updates under linux instead of this wretched dual boot situation?

[brettpim]

I have just installed Ubuntu 14.04 on my Dell Latitude XT2. Everything seems to be working (touch, stylus and big button) except the small button on the stylus does nothing. I have tried to see if I am getting any X events from it using 'xev' but the pen movement events overwhelm any button events.

here are outputs of some relevant commands

$ xsetwacom list
N-Trig Pen stylus               	id: 12	type: STYLUS    
N-Trig Pen eraser               	id: 17	type: ERASER    
N-Trig Pen pad                  	id: 18	type: PAD

$ xinput --list-props "N-Trig Pen stylus"
Device 'N-Trig Pen stylus':
	Device Enabled (133):	1
	Coordinate Transformation Matrix (135):	1.000000, 0.000000, 0.000000, 0.000000, 1.000000, 0.000000, 0.000000, 0.000000, 1.000000
	Device Accel Profile (262):	0
	Device Accel Constant Deceleration (263):	1.000000
	Device Accel Adaptive Deceleration (264):	1.000000
	Device Accel Velocity Scaling (265):	10.000000
	Device Node (251):	"/dev/input/event8"
	Wacom Tablet Area (288):	-48, -73, 9632, 7282
	Wacom Rotation (289):	0
	Wacom Pressurecurve (290):	0, 0, 100, 100
	Wacom Serial IDs (291):	1, 1, 0, 1, 0
	Wacom Serial ID binding (292):	0
	Wacom Pressure Threshold (293):	27
	Wacom Sample and Suppress (294):	2, 4
	Wacom Enable Touch (295):	1
	Wacom Hover Click (296):	1
	Wacom Enable Touch Gesture (297):	0
	Wacom Touch Gesture Parameters (298):	0, 0, 250
	Wacom Tool Type (299):	"STYLUS" (283)
	Wacom Button Actions (300):	"Wacom button action 0" (301), "Wacom button action 1" (302), "Wacom button action 2" (303)
	Wacom button action 0 (301):	1572865
	Wacom button action 1 (302):	1572867
	Wacom button action 2 (303):	1572867
	Device Product ID (250):	7062, 1
	Wacom Debug Levels (304):	0, 0

$ xinput --list-props "N-Trig Pen eraser"
Device 'N-Trig Pen eraser':
	Device Enabled (133):	1
	Coordinate Transformation Matrix (135):	1.000000, 0.000000, 0.000000, 0.000000, 1.000000, 0.000000, 0.000000, 0.000000, 1.000000
	Device Accel Profile (262):	0
	Device Accel Constant Deceleration (263):	1.000000
	Device Accel Adaptive Deceleration (264):	1.000000
	Device Accel Velocity Scaling (265):	10.000000
	Device Node (251):	"/dev/input/event8"
	Wacom Tablet Area (288):	-48, -73, 9632, 7282
	Wacom Rotation (289):	0
	Wacom Pressurecurve (290):	0, 0, 100, 100
	Wacom Serial IDs (291):	1, 1, 0, 0, 0
	Wacom Serial ID binding (292):	0
	Wacom Pressure Threshold (293):	27
	Wacom Sample and Suppress (294):	2, 4
	Wacom Enable Touch (295):	1
	Wacom Enable Touch Gesture (297):	0
	Wacom Touch Gesture Parameters (298):	0, 0, 250
	Wacom Tool Type (299):	"ERASER" (342)
	Wacom Button Actions (300):	"Wacom button action 0" (301), "Wacom button action 1" (302), "Wacom button action 2" (303)
	Wacom button action 0 (301):	1572865
	Wacom button action 1 (302):	1572867
	Wacom button action 2 (303):	1572867
	Device Product ID (250):	7062, 1
	Wacom Debug Levels (304):	0, 0

using xinput or xsetwacom to change the button action has not been succesful. In fact, using either xinput or xsetwacom, I can set the big button to act just like left mouse (1572865) but either of the two other settings (1572866 and 1572867) both act the same. I think they are being overridden by the Settings->Wacom Tablet button settings. I can control whether the big button acts as middle click or right click though Settings->Wacom Tablet interface. But I have not been able to use any of these tools to set the small button.

I thought maybe my stylus was broken so I bought a used one on EBay, but it has same behaviour.

If there are other commands I should run, please let me know.

thanks
brett

[brad27]

input:
sudo apt-get build-dep utouch-gesturetest

output:
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
E: Unable to find a source package for utouch-gesturetest