getting Wacom tablet to work in 'absolute' mode

xilmin · 05-01-2005, 05:38 AM

I am a complete amateur at Linux, so I really need help. I've recently bought a Wacom Graphire tablet and while technically I can get it to work, the pen will only move like a mouse. I've looked around the net a lot and read old posts here, but I've suitably confused myself. I tried editing the xf86config file according to what I found, but despite adding in the line

Option "Mode" "absolute"

to the stylus and eraser parts, the pen remains working in relative mode.

To make me even more confused, for some reason the tablet does not work at all if I take out this section (which I only removed because I thought it was an obsolete section from my attempts at getting my mouse to work):

Section "InputDevice"
Driver "mouse"
Identifier "Mouse[3]"
Option "Device" "/dev/pointer0"
Option "Name" "Autodetection"
Option "Protocol" "imps/2"
Option "Vendor" "Sysp"
EndSection

(and removed the line referring to that from the 'ServerLayout' section)

If anyone can give me any clues as to how to get this pen to work like a pen, I shall be so incredibly grateful!

Xilmin

wjhenney · 05-02-2005, 08:44 AM

Have you followed all the instructions at http://linuxwacom.sourceforge.net ?

These worked for me on Fedora Core 1. I've just upgraded to FC3 so I'm having to go through it again now (things seem slightly different with the 2.6 kernel).

You will probably get more useful responses if you give details of your distro/kernel/X setup.

Cheers

Will

xilmin · 05-02-2005, 11:22 AM

I tried to follow that, but I got so overwhelmingly confused. Particularly considering from what I understood of it I was supposed to alter the kernel to get the USB to work, but that was never a problem for me. And the last thing I want to do is edit the kernel since I have no idea what I'm doing at the best of times.

Where can I find the info on what distro/kernel/x setup I'm using, since I don't actually know what I'm using? :: proving herself to be a complete newbie ::

Thanks!

Xilmin

wjhenney · 05-02-2005, 04:21 PM

Yeah, that FAQ is very confusing. I've been using Linux for ten years and I have difficulty following it. If you concentrate really hard though, it does work in the end

Here is a log of exactly what I had to do on my system (Fedora Core 3):

http://www.astrosmo.unam.mx/~w.henne...comTablet.html

You shouldn't have to recompile your kernel as such but you do need the kernel source code in order to compile some new drivers for it as modules. This is not as scary as it sounds

As to your system info:

1. Kernel. This is easy, just type

Code:

uname -r

2. X11 version. Try

Code:

X -version

and just look at the first line.

3. Distro. Hmm, are you sure you don't know what this is. It will be something like "Fedora" or "Red Hat" or "SUSE" or "Debian" or "Ubuntu". If you are really stuck, try

Code:

cat /etc/issue

xilmin · 05-03-2005, 03:51 PM

My system info is SUSE 9.0, kernel 2.4.21, X version 4.3.0. Thanks for the help there!

I had another go at the Linux Wacom project tutorial, and got as far as the configure command for 'linuxwacom-0.6.6' and I got these errors when I typed the command './configure --enable-wacom' (assume I do need that option, right?):

checking for kernel sources... /usr/src/linux
checking for kernel module versioning... yes
***
*** WARNING:
*** is not supported by this pachage
*** Kernel modules will not be built
***
no
checking for gtk-config... no
checking for pkg-config... no
***
*** WARNING:
*** unable to find any gtk development environment; are the
*** development packages installed? gtk will not be used.
***

and then:

***
*** WARNING:
*** Unable to compile wacom.o without kernel build environment
*** wacom.o will not be built
***
***
*** WARNING:
*** Unable to compile wacom_drv.o without XF86 build environment
*** or Xorg SDK.
*** wacom_drv.o will not be built
***

I hope that makes more sense to you than it does to me...

Thanks for you help again!

Xilmin

wjhenney · 05-03-2005, 07:12 PM

Hi again, I haven't got time for a detailed reply at the moment (elder sprog's tea to attend to) so I'll just fire off a couple of quick things and try and get back to you sometime tomorrow if you need more details.

I just did a google on "SUSE wacom" and came up with this:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...05/03/2/291974

See the second paragraph of that page. It seems that more recent versions of SUSE have a graphical installer for the wacom tablets. He is talking about 9.2 whereas you have 9.0, which I guess must be quite old now.

However, I don't think that there is any reason why you can't install the drivers on your current version so long as you persevere. The error message you get seems a bit strange, but I think it is because you need to explicitly specify where your kernel sources are hidden. The configure script was looking in the file /usr/include/linux/version.h to check what kernel version you are running but failed to find anything useful there.

Have a look if this file exists on your system:

/lib/modules/2.4.21/build/include/linux/version.h

If so, then try doing

./configure --enable-wacom --with-kernel="/lib/modules/2.4.21/build"

Good luck !

Will

xilmin · 05-04-2005, 02:52 PM

I did originally use the graphical installer, but it doesn't allow for configurations, so I can't use the tablet in absolute mode with that, which is what started me hunting around for other ways to install.

Specifying the kernel sources got rid of two of the error messages. It's still talking about gtk (which I know got installed with I first started with Linux) and the XF86 build environment. Both of which I have no idea where to look to find the directory they are located in...

xilmin · 05-07-2005, 07:33 AM

New problem...

I continued to install without gtk or the xf86 build environment specified, hoping that I could still get it to work somehow. I got to the point to plug it in, but I got these messages:

May 7 13:42:20 tarbert kernel: hub.c: new USB device 00:07.2-2, assigned address 3
May 7 13:42:20 tarbert kernel: Reporting max 16704, 12064
May 7 13:42:20 tarbert kernel: wacom.c: Setting tablet report for tablet data
May 7 13:42:20 tarbert kernel: wacom.c: input0: Wacom Graphire3 6x8 on usb1:3.0
May 7 13:42:23 tarbert kernel: usb.c: registered new driver hiddev
May 7 13:42:23 tarbert kernel: usb.c: registered new driver hid
May 7 13:42:23 tarbert kernel: hid-core.c: v1.8.1 Andreas Gal, Vojtech Pavlik <vojtech@suse.cz>
May 7 13:42:23 tarbert kernel: hid-core.c: USB HID support drivers
May 7 13:42:23 tarbert insmod: Using /lib/modules/2.4.21-202-athlon/kernel/drivers/usb/hid.o

Even although everything else looked ok, it was still using hid.o, so I continued to run the configure script with the extra things enabled that are listed on the Linux Wacom Project site. Only I got these messages when I ran the configure.

checking for updated field names in hid-core.c... missing, using 2.4.19
***
*** Warning: unable to find hid-core.c in kernel tree
*** It was not possible to detect whether patches needed to be
*** applied. If the hid-core.c in this project does not build
*** correctly, you should resolve this problem first.
***
checking for HID_QUIRK... ***
*** Warning: unable to find hid.h in kernel tree
*** It was not possible to detect whether patches needed to be
*** applied. If the hid-core.c in this project does not build
*** correctly, you should resolve this problem first.
***

I checked and hid-core.c and hid.h are both here:

/usr/src/linux-2.4.21-202/drivers/usb/

It seems like such a simple question after all that, but: how do I tell it to look there?

Xilmin