Complaint: Wacom driver in 2.6

Complaint: Wacom driver in 2.6

[Simon Ask Ulsnes]

Hello there!
I am the lucky owner of a Wacom Graphire 2 tablet, which works great with the 
latest 2.4-kernels. However, the 2.6-drive is unusually and utterly broken. 
Frankly, it doesn't work at all.

When I load up X11 with the proper /dev-symlinks and all that stuff in place 
(2.6 names the tablet /dev/input/event1 as opposed to 2.4, which names it /
dev/input/event0), the tablet simply doesn't respond. I can see in my 
XFree86.0.log file that the tablet is recognized correctly by the kernel, but 
that's about it.

Of course, I tried the linux-wacom (linux-wacom.sourceforge.net) drivers, but 
they fail to compile most miserably (the beta dev-version). From what I could 
deduce of the compiler output, it is incompatible with 2.6.

I filed a bug report a long time ago (2.5.65-ish), but no one really seemed to 
care.

I would really like some info on what progress is being made in this area, as 
it currently is the only thing stopping me from switching seriously to 2.6.
I suppose it is also one of those drivers that Linus keeps talking about need 
to be ready before 2.6 can be finally released (in which I agree, obviously).

And finally, some relevant system specs:
Distro: Gentoo
Kernel: 2.6.0-test6
X11: XFree86 4.3.99.12

Yours sincerely,
Simon Ask Ulsnes

Re: Complaint: Wacom driver in 2.6

[Matt Gibson]

On Monday 29 Sep 2003 13:21, Simon Ask Ulsnes wrote:
> Hello there!
> I am the lucky owner of a Wacom Graphire 2 tablet, which works great with
> the latest 2.4-kernels. However, the 2.6-drive is unusually and utterly
> broken. Frankly, it doesn't work at all.

If it's any hope for you, I'm using the Wacom driver with an original 
Graphire, and it's working OK for me.  I'm currently on 2.6.0-test5, and I'm 
pretty sure I'm using the vanilla wacom.c (it's version 1.30 according to 
the comments.)

If you want any info about how I've got things configured, feel free to give 
me a shout.  In particular, I've got these relevant entries in my 
XF86Config:

# Our ordinary PS/2 and Wacom mice; they're both multiplexed into
# /dev/mice by the kernel input event handling.
Section "InputDevice"
  Driver       "mouse"
  Identifier   "Mouse[1]"
  Option       "ButtonNumber" "5"
  Option       "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
  Option       "Name" "Autodetection"
  Option       "Protocol" "imps/2"
  Option       "Vendor" "Random"
  Option       "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection

Goodness knows if I need half those options set up; it's a 
much-hacked-about-with old file that was originally set up by the SuSE SaX2 
configuration tool, about three years ago!  But I tend to live by "if it 
ain't broke, don't fix it."  I guess the important thing I did to get it 
working under 2.6.0 was just to drop all the event interface crap and just 
run it off /dev/input/mice, which is where the kernel happily feeds all the 
wacom input through into.

Section "ServerLayout"
	... other stuff deleted ...
  InputDevice  "Mouse[1]" "CorePointer"
EndSection

That's all I needed to get the mouse and pen working.  Of course, to go the 
whole hog and get the pressure sensitive stuff and the pointer vs. eraser 
functionality etc. you'd need to use the X11 wacom driver, but I've never 
actually felt the need.

Cheers,

Matt

-- 
"It's the small gaps between the rain that count,
 and learning how to live amongst them."
	      -- Jeff Noon

Re: Complaint: Wacom driver in 2.6

[Simon Ask Ulsnes]

Thanks for replying.
You aren't even using the wacom driver!
Mine works too in that way (I think it is some kind of regular PS/2 mouse 
emulation or so).

Come to think of it, maybe the problem lies in the XFree86 driver, which I 
suppose isn't really compatible with the new kernel. Well, whatayaknow... ;-)

- Simon

On Monday 29 September 2003 20:56, you wrote:
> On Monday 29 Sep 2003 13:21, Simon Ask Ulsnes wrote:
> > Hello there!
> > I am the lucky owner of a Wacom Graphire 2 tablet, which works great with
> > the latest 2.4-kernels. However, the 2.6-drive is unusually and utterly
> > broken. Frankly, it doesn't work at all.
>
> If it's any hope for you, I'm using the Wacom driver with an original
> Graphire, and it's working OK for me.  I'm currently on 2.6.0-test5, and
> I'm pretty sure I'm using the vanilla wacom.c (it's version 1.30 according
> to the comments.)
>
> If you want any info about how I've got things configured, feel free to
> give me a shout.  In particular, I've got these relevant entries in my
> XF86Config:
>
> # Our ordinary PS/2 and Wacom mice; they're both multiplexed into
> # /dev/mice by the kernel input event handling.
> Section "InputDevice"
>   Driver       "mouse"
>   Identifier   "Mouse[1]"
>   Option       "ButtonNumber" "5"
>   Option       "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
>   Option       "Name" "Autodetection"
>   Option       "Protocol" "imps/2"
>   Option       "Vendor" "Random"
>   Option       "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
> EndSection
>
> Goodness knows if I need half those options set up; it's a
> much-hacked-about-with old file that was originally set up by the SuSE SaX2
> configuration tool, about three years ago!  But I tend to live by "if it
> ain't broke, don't fix it."  I guess the important thing I did to get it
> working under 2.6.0 was just to drop all the event interface crap and just
> run it off /dev/input/mice, which is where the kernel happily feeds all the
> wacom input through into.
>
> Section "ServerLayout"
> 	... other stuff deleted ...
>   InputDevice  "Mouse[1]" "CorePointer"
> EndSection
>
> That's all I needed to get the mouse and pen working.  Of course, to go the
> whole hog and get the pressure sensitive stuff and the pointer vs. eraser
> functionality etc. you'd need to use the X11 wacom driver, but I've never
> actually felt the need.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Matt

Re: Complaint: Wacom driver in 2.6

[Matt Gibson]

[disclaimer: I am not a kernel developer!]
On Tuesday 30 Sep 2003 07:59, Simon Ask Ulsnes <simon@ulsnes.dk> wrote:
> Thanks for replying.
> You aren't even using the wacom driver!

I _am_ using the wacom driver.  I'm just using the wacom kernel driver rather 
than the XFree86 wacom  driver.

> Mine works too in that way (I think it is some kind of regular PS/2 mouse
> emulation or so).

I think it goes something like this: the kernel wacom driver now interprets 
wacom packets into standard kernel mouse input.  See drivers/usb/input/
wacom.c for that: it's the wacom_graphire_irq() function that's doing it for 
us both.  Then /dev/mice gathers the input from all sources like this and 
presents them as a single ps/2-style mouse interface.  I _think_ this is 
done in mousedev.c, but I haven't really looked into it.  Someone feel free 
to correct me!

On my machine, the result is that events from both my Wacom and my old PS/2 
style mouse are seamlessly merged into /dev/mice, so that's all X needs to 
consider, and I could use them both at once if I wanted.  Not that useful to 
me, in fact, and the PS/2 mouse is only connected for those rare occasions 
when I boot into some ancient program from a DOS floppy, but hey...

I think, if you want to get the XFree86 driver working, you can't use /dev/
mice as well (otherwise, for example, when using the pen,  your X mouse will 
get events from both /dev/mice, as the kernel translates the pen movements 
into /dev/mice events, _and_ from the Wacom driver interpreting the same 
input event stream.

> Come to think of it, maybe the problem lies in the XFree86 driver, which I
> suppose isn't really compatible with the new kernel. Well, whatayaknow...
> ;-)

I think that may be your problem.  I don't know whether the standard event 
interface has changed at all recently.  I haven't found any need for the 
extra tablet features yet that would need me to look into the XFree driver 
thoroughly (one thing I do remember, though, is that the last time I looked, 
you needed to remove the mouse from the pad and drop it back down again 
before the driver started working -- did you try that, or were you seeing 
weird results rather than no results at all?)

Anyway.  It's quite possible that as 2.6 starts "getting about a bit", the 
XFree86 driver will be naturally updated to cope with it.  I don't know what 
the current status of the driver is.  The project homepage is here: 
http://people.mandrakesoft.com/~flepied/projects/wacom/ ...but I'm guessing 
you'd already found that.

Good luck!

M

-- 
"It's the small gaps between the rain that count,
 and learning how to live amongst them."
	      -- Jeff Noon

Re: Complaint: Wacom driver in 2.6

[Simon Ask Ulsnes]

Exactly. Of course I never have both the IMPS/2 protocol driver and the Wacom 
driver enabled at the same time in XF86Config. The only difference between 
working and non-working is the kernel version. (i.e. it works perfectly with 
2.4 and not at all with 2.6).

One funny thing: I haven't got the mousedev module loaded at all, only evdev, 
hid and wacom.

You are right about the micro-bug about having to lift the mouse off the 
tablet for the wacom driver under 2.4 to be activated. That is standard 
behaviour, and has no effect with 2.6.

The reason I am not satisfied with things the way they are is that it feels 
like somehow the dimensions on the tablet don't fit with the screen. E.g., my 
mouse or pen might hit an edge on the tablet being several centimeters from 
the edge of the screen. And mouse (not pen) movement is absolute, it should 
be relative, which is a pain in a certain place.

The link you provided is outdated, the newest project is on 
linuxwacom.sourceforge.net. It seems strangely stalled, though.

Sincerely yours,
Simon Ask Ulsnes

On Tuesday 30 September 2003 19:13, you wrote:
> [disclaimer: I am not a kernel developer!]
>
> On Tuesday 30 Sep 2003 07:59, Simon Ask Ulsnes <simon@ulsnes.dk> wrote:
> > Thanks for replying.
> > You aren't even using the wacom driver!
>
> I _am_ using the wacom driver.  I'm just using the wacom kernel driver
> rather than the XFree86 wacom  driver.
>
> > Mine works too in that way (I think it is some kind of regular PS/2 mouse
> > emulation or so).
>
> I think it goes something like this: the kernel wacom driver now interprets
> wacom packets into standard kernel mouse input.  See drivers/usb/input/
> wacom.c for that: it's the wacom_graphire_irq() function that's doing it
> for us both.  Then /dev/mice gathers the input from all sources like this
> and presents them as a single ps/2-style mouse interface.  I _think_ this
> is done in mousedev.c, but I haven't really looked into it.  Someone feel
> free to correct me!
>
> On my machine, the result is that events from both my Wacom and my old PS/2
> style mouse are seamlessly merged into /dev/mice, so that's all X needs to
> consider, and I could use them both at once if I wanted.  Not that useful
> to me, in fact, and the PS/2 mouse is only connected for those rare
> occasions when I boot into some ancient program from a DOS floppy, but
> hey...
>
> I think, if you want to get the XFree86 driver working, you can't use /dev/
> mice as well (otherwise, for example, when using the pen,  your X mouse
> will get events from both /dev/mice, as the kernel translates the pen
> movements into /dev/mice events, _and_ from the Wacom driver interpreting
> the same input event stream.
>
> > Come to think of it, maybe the problem lies in the XFree86 driver, which
> > I suppose isn't really compatible with the new kernel. Well,
> > whatayaknow... ;-)
>
> I think that may be your problem.  I don't know whether the standard event
> interface has changed at all recently.  I haven't found any need for the
> extra tablet features yet that would need me to look into the XFree driver
> thoroughly (one thing I do remember, though, is that the last time I
> looked, you needed to remove the mouse from the pad and drop it back down
> again before the driver started working -- did you try that, or were you
> seeing weird results rather than no results at all?)
>
> Anyway.  It's quite possible that as 2.6 starts "getting about a bit", the
> XFree86 driver will be naturally updated to cope with it.  I don't know
> what the current status of the driver is.  The project homepage is here:
> http://people.mandrakesoft.com/~flepied/projects/wacom/ ...but I'm guessing
> you'd already found that.
>
> Good luck!
>
> M

Re: Complaint: Wacom driver in 2.6

[Matt Gibson]

On Tuesday 30 Sep 2003 21:59, Simon Ask Ulsnes wrote:
> One funny thing: I haven't got the mousedev module loaded at all, only
> evdev, hid and wacom.

Mousedev can only be compiled as a module if you've said yes to "Remove 
Kernel Features" from the General Setup screen (usually used for lightweight 
embedded kernels.)   Otherwise it's always compiled straight in.

> The reason I am not satisfied with things the way they are is that it
> feels like somehow the dimensions on the tablet don't fit with the screen.
> E.g., my mouse or pen might hit an edge on the tablet being several
> centimeters from the edge of the screen. And mouse (not pen) movement is
> absolute, it should be relative, which is a pain in a certain place.

Hmm.  Well, I think I'll give it a go and see what I can get working; I'll 
probably want to use the pen/eraser stuff properly at some point.  Although 
I'm not drawing much any more, they do come in handy sometimes.  I'll get 
back to you after I've had a bit of a play.

> The link you provided is outdated, the newest project is on
> linuxwacom.sourceforge.net. It seems strangely stalled, though.

Thanks; I'll update my bookmarks.  It has been a while!

M

-- 
"It's the small gaps between the rain that count,
 and learning how to live amongst them."
	      -- Jeff Noon