Wacom Graphire USB
Last updated: 6-5-02
I bought a refurbished ruby Wacom Graphire tablet and set about getting it to work with Linux. I was initially running Red Hat 7.2 with the 2.4.7 default kernel. After getting my USB working, I found two HOWTOs (the Wacom Tablet HOWTO and the Wacom Graphire USB Mini-HOWTO) and began reading through them. Then I found Frederic Lepied's page which had updated drivers for the kernel and for XFree86. I recompiled my kernel with the updates, copied the XFree86 driver into the appropriate directory, and plugged in my tablet. It didn't work. The messages in /var/log/messages looked somewhat reassuring, and my XFree86 log told me it was picking up events, but I couldn't get the pen to work in the GIMP or Gsumi. I eventually realized that perhaps the kernel was at fault, so I upgraded to 2.4.17, messed around with it some more, and voila! It now works almost perfectly.
Here's how I got it to work with the 2.4.17 kernel. First of all I downloaded the kernel source and unpacked it in /usr/src. Then I copied Lepied's updates (wacom.c 1.21.3/1.23, usbmouse.c 1.6, hid-core.c 1.8.1) into the appropriate directory:
| cp -f wacom.c usbmouse.c hid-core.c /usr/src/linux/drivers/usb |
Next I configured my kernel. You can find my kernel configuration file here. Here are the relevant settings I used:
| Input Core Support: |
<M> Input core support <M> Keyboard support <M> Mouse support <1024> Horizontal screen resolution <768> Vertical screen resolution <M> Joystick support <M> Event interface support |
| USB Support: |
<Y> Support for USB <Y> USB verbose debug messages <Y> Preliminary USB device filesystem <M> UHCI (Intel PIIX4, VIA, ...) support <N> UHCI Alternate Driver (JE) support <N> OHCI (Compaq, iMacs, OPTi, SiS, ALi, ...) support <M> USB Human Interface Device (full HID) support <N> USB HIDBP Keyboard (basic) support <N> USB HIDBP Mouse (basic) support <M> Wacom Intuos/Graphire tablet support
USB Serial Converter support |
After saving my new configuration, I edited the Makefile in /usr/src/linux:
| EXTRAVERSION = test |
This way it wouldn't overwrite my old kernel. I recompiled:
|
cd /usr/src/linux make install make modules make modules_install |
And then I rebooted into the new kernel. Note: I think my system (Red Hat 7.2) already had the /dev/input devices set up. If yours doesn't (if there isn't a /dev/input), you'll need to set them up as described in section 4.3 of the USB mini-HOWTO before you reboot. Lepied's alpha 26 driver was compiled for XFree86 4.2, but I'm running 4.1 and didn't want to download all of 4.2, so I downloaded the alpha 25 driver and copied it to the right directory:
|
gzip -d wacom_drv.o.gz cp -f wacom_drv.o /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/input |
Next I had to edit my /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 file:
|
Section "ServerLayout" Identifier "Anaconda Configured" Screen 0 "Screen0" 0 0 InputDevice "Mouse0" "CorePointer" InputDevice "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard" InputDevice "cursor" "SendCoreEvents" InputDevice "stylus" "SendCoreEvents" InputDevice "eraser" "SendCoreEvents" EndSection
Section "InputDevice"
Section "InputDevice" Identifier "cursor" Driver "wacom" Option "Type" "cursor" Option "Device" "/dev/input/event0" Option "Mode" "relative" Option "USB" "on" Option "Speed" "3.0" Option "DebugLevel" "10" EndSection |
If that doesn't work for you, try changing the three "SendCoreEvents" to "AlwaysCore". To get the tablet to work, I have to follow this process:
|
1. Plug tablet into USB port 2. modprobe usb-uhci 3. modprobe wacom 4. modprobe mousedev 5. modprobe evdev 6. Restart X |
If I unplug the tablet, I have to remove the modules (with rmmod) and repeat the above process to get it to work again. I'm still not sure why I have to reload the usb-uhci module; perhaps my USB isn't working as well as I think it is. I get the following message in my system logs, repeated several times as I draw:
| kernel: wacom_graphire_irq: received unknown report #1 |
If you know what's causing that, please let me know. (I think it's my VAIO's messed-up USB.) I tried taking out the Option "DebugLevel" "10" lines from my XF86Config-4, but then the tablet didn't work. That may be connected to this IRQ problem and could just be a quirk with my USB. If you get it to work without those DebugLevel lines, please let me know.
The tablet works quite well, at least as far as I can tell. It differentiates between the stylus, the eraser, and the cursor (the wireless mouse). In the GIMP, I set the three devices to "screen" mode, which I prefer to "window". (Window mode means that the pen will only work within the image window. I like to use the pen as a mouse, however, using it to select tools and so on, so I set it to screen mode instead. If I need more drawing area, I just zoom in on the image.) The pressure sensitivity works almost flawlessly. It's very nice. I didn't realize how cool the GIMP pen tool is until now. :)
Links
Wacom XInput driver for XFree86 -- Frederic Lepied's updated driverWacom mailing list archives -- quite useful
Wacom Tablet HOWTO -- a good resource
Wacom Graphire USB Mini-HOWTO -- this is rather outdated and probably won't help much
Wacom Technology -- the maker
Ayoros' Wacom Intuos/Graphire USB tablets on Linux HOWTO
Ayoros' Wacom Intuos/Graphire USB tablets on Linux HOWTO -- alternate URL
Brion Vibber's Wacom Graphire USB Stuff -- outdated
Alternative drivers at ftp.aros.org
Linux Tablet Homepage
XInput support for the GTK and the GIMP
Wacom Graphire USB -- in French, but seems to be accurate
Tablette Graphire USB et Xfree4 -- in French
Grafiktablett-Support für X11 und Gimp -- outdated, in German
Matsumura Namihiko's Wacom USB Tablet with Linux page -- in Japanese
