HOW TO Set Up the Bamboo Pen & Touch in Lucid

[christh]

Hi Favux

I think it was 5 attempts but I think I've finally got it cracked - it's all good practice for me.

One thing I have noticed this evening whilst having a poke around in some of the files, is that the wcmCommon.c file that came with the xf86-input-wacom does not have the
#define BAMBOO_TOUCH_JUMPED 30 line mentioned in your guide.

#define BAMBOO_TOUCH_JUMPED 30 is in the xf86-input-wacom you can get from sourceforge site - Well beyond me if it's an issue but thought I'd best mention it just in case it's the wrong version.

Thanks

Chris

[Favux]

Alright, fifth time is a charm.

Someone else mentioned that. Well they're changing the Bamboo code again in preparation of turning it into multitouch (mt) compliant code. So maybe Chris removed that in the patches he submitted and they committed. I haven't looked. I know it's still in the 0.10.8 tar. Hopefully he's included his fix. I guess it still belongs in the HOW TO if you're using the tar.

[ubername]

Anyone get anywhere with kernel 2.6.36?

I get, on the 'make' step,

linuxwacom-0.8.8-10/src/2.6.30/wacom_wac.c:205:17: error: ‘struct input_dev’ has no member named ‘abs’

I'm not savvy enough to crack this but in my bumbling around I found at http://www.linuxhq.com/kernel/v2.6/3.../linux/input.h

- * @abs: current values for reports from absolute axes

and

+ * @absinfo: array of &struct absinfo elements holding information
+ * about absolute axes (current value, min, max, flat, fuzz,
+ * resolution)

which suggest I need to change the lines with
e.g.

if (x == input->abs[ABS_X])

to use absinfo instead of abs, but I have no real programming skill, so in true cowboy fashion I just tried a straight swap to

if (x == input->absinfo[ABS_X])

which gives

linuxwacom-0.8.8-10/src/2.6.30/wacom_wac.c:205:9: error: invalid operands to binary == (have ‘int’ and ‘struct input_absinfo’)

I guess this means I'm mucking up the data types (or something!)

Any clues?


I may of course be wildly off the track here!

[Favux]

Hi ubername,

The link was a nice find. Looking at it there's also input_absinfo and some defines adding additional variables and some functions.

Did you just change the one line in wacom_wac.c or did you do a search and replace? If the latter did you do a diff to see how many lines were changed and where they were?

I also noticed the link was associated with MT. As I've been discussing the kernel maintainer apparently has been refusing to accept the more recent wacom.ko's because they don't comply with the new MT specifications. Apparently they've submitted a test wacom.ko with some MT changes and are awaiting review. Actually that was a while ago now, but I haven't heard of any results. So I'm expecting a serious rewrite of the wacom.ko code for the Bamboos and other MT devices which is somehow backward compliant. Chris is already submitting preparatory MT patches to xf86-input-wacom and some have already been accepted. Don't know for sure which kernel it'll show up in. But it may not be worth a lot of effort to pursue getting what appears will soon be deprecated code working on 2.6.36.

[ubername]

Hi ubername,


Did you just change the one line in wacom_wac.c or did you do a search and replace? If the latter did you do a diff to see how many lines were changed and where they were?

I changed the 4 lines which gave errors in the 'make'

Don't know for sure which kernel it'll show up in. But it may not be worth a lot of effort to pursue getting what appears will soon be deprecated code working on 2.6.36.

Probably right, I had a hunch that I could be opening a massive can of worms even if I could fix that one problem.

[ehfortin]

Hi Favux,

It has been a long time since I post something about my Bamboo tablet as I had to reinstall Ubuntu and... didn't really needed the tablet then and when time came, I was just too busy to do this again.

I'm now on Ubuntu 10.10 (but tried this on 10.04 as well) and I can get the tablet to work (tried it with CTL-460 and CTH-661) and I always have the same issue with the pen. I can move the cursor around the screen but as soon as I touch/draw something, if I don't lift the pen out of the recognition area, the cursor is not moving anymore. As soon as I get out of range and back, the cursor start moving freely again.

Is that a problem that was reported before and is there a fix? With about 26 pages of post since your initial post, I just don't have enough time to read it all as I'm still under time pressure.

Let me know if that something that has been mentioned and fixed.

Thank you.

ehfortin

[Favux]

Hi ehfortin,

Good to hear from you again.

So both in Lucid and Maverick. And on two different Bamboos.

I can move the cursor around the screen but as soon as I touch/draw something, if I don't lift the pen out of the recognition area, the cursor is not moving anymore. As soon as I get out of range and back, the cursor start moving freely again.

I've seen that on non-wacom tablets when they're not on the intended driver but instead they're on evdev. I don't think I've seen it with Wacom. Did you check Xorg.0.log to make sure the wacom drivers had the tablet?

Have you tried turning touch off?

[ehfortin]

Interesting... The log regarding the CTL-460 seems to indicate the proper tablet (Wacom Bamboo 4x5 Pen) but then add a Wacom Bamboo 4x5 Finger (which this tablet does not support) so... it is probably linking to a model that support both mode. But more interestingly is that you talk about evdev and I think that is what is kicking in. I can see this in the log:

[  2307.528] (**) Wacom Bamboo 4x5 Pen: Applying InputClass "evdev tablet catchall"
[  2307.528] (**) Wacom Bamboo 4x5 Pen: always reports core events
[  2307.528] (**) Wacom Bamboo 4x5 Pen: Device: "/dev/input/event9"
[  2307.540] (II) Wacom Bamboo 4x5 Pen: Found absolute axes
[  2307.540] (II) evdev-grail: failed to open grail, no gesture support
...
[  2307.677] (II) No input driver/identifier specified (ignoring)
[  2792.318] (WW) Wacom Bamboo 4x5 Pen: unable to handle keycode 331
[  3204.849] (II) config/udev: removing device Wacom Bamboo 4x5 Pen
[  3204.856] (II) Wacom Bamboo 4x5 Pen: Close
[  3204.856] (II) UnloadModule: "evdev"

It does about the same for the Bamboo Fun. I'll look back at your instruction but I don't recall having seen anything about removing/disabling evdev so it may be because something else is not kicking in correctly. If I do lsmod, I can see the wacom driver so it is loaded. Probably just not linked to the tablet as you mentioned.

What was the fix for those evdev issue you were referring to?

Thank you.

ehfortin

[Favux]

Either reinstalling the driver so it was installed correctly or changing the .conf file so the match lines or whatever worked.

Evdev is well behaved. Unlike Synaptic (which they just finally fixed) it will only grab a device if nothing else has.

[ehfortin]

That's what I just done. This time it worked. I guess I missed something the first time. It is just interesting to note that it ended with a semi-working config (well, pretty much all was working except the fact that you had to get out of range to "reactivate" the cursor way too often).

I'll now have to look further in the xsetwacom stuff. I think I understand most of it and I can make the link with the result coming from xinput --list. I assume the ID are changing based on the devices you have on your system?

Thank you.

ehfortin