Needs input hotplug: Tablet Notebook's Stylus Not Working

[Square Bottle]

I'm using a Toshiba Tecra M4 tablet notebook, which uses Wacom technology to do the whole use-a-stylus-like-a-mouse thing that makes it a tablet. As of the new beta, the stylus no longer works as an input device. It worked in the previous Gutsy release as well as Feisty.

I have tested this for the 64-bit versions of Ubuntu Gutsy Beta and Kubuntu Gutsy Beta. Works for neither of them, even though it worked in the 64-bit versions of Ubuntu Gutsy Tribe 5 and Kubuntu Gutsy Tribe 5.

[Shadows_Friend (shadows-friend)]

I can confirm this on an Acer Travelmate C200. The stylus worked very well out-of-the box on Feisty and the Gutsy Tribes (LiveCDs and installed systems). But with the new Gutsy Beta it neither works with the LiveCD nor with the installed system. The reason are the following commented lines in xorg.conf:

Section "ServerLayout"
        Identifier "Default Layout"
  screen "Default Screen"
        Inputdevice "Generic Keyboard"
        Inputdevice "Configured Mouse"

        # Uncomment if you have a wacom tablet
        # InputDevice "stylus" "SendCoreEvents"
        # InputDevice "cursor" "SendCoreEvents"
        # InputDevice "eraser" "SendCoreEvents"
        Inputdevice "Synaptics Touchpad"
EndSection

When you uncomment them it works again.
I think if a wacom device is recognized during installation, it should be automatically adjusted so that it works out-of-the-box again, as it did before.

[Shadows_Friend (shadows-friend)]

Confirmed this bug on an Acer Travelmate C200.

Steps to reproduce:
1. Use a wacom-tablet
2. Boot the Gutsy Beta LiveCD
3. Recognize the stylus doesn't work

[Square Bottle (squarebottle)]

I recommend setting the importance of this to "Very High" because this happens to be one of those things that if it doesn't work, the people who have this hardware will not stick around. We paid for a tablet, and so if we don't get tablet functionality, we won't use it. Of course it's a simple thing to fix if you know what you're doing, but the majority of the people who will run into this will be artists, not programmers, and thus will be less inclined to know that such a thing as xorg.conf even exists.

I don't actually think it negatively affects people without Wacom tablets to have those lines uncommented anyway, so I don't understand why they suddenly were commented out by default.

[probono (probono)]

In Gutsy final, my tablet PC's Wacom tablet does not work any more. It did work out of the box (even on the Live CD) in the previous Ubuntu release.

[Henrik Nilsen Omma (henrik)]

The comments were added because the Wacom settings were causing problems for other devices and functionality like accessible login. Clearly this should be fixed to 'just work' for everyone, targeting for Hardy.

This bug was nominated for Gutsy but does currently not qualify for a 7.10 stable release update (SRU) and the nomination is therefore declined.
According the the SRU policy, the fix should already be deployed and tested in the current development version before an update to the stable releases will be considered. With 7.10 now released, that policy applies to this bug. See: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/StableReleaseUpdates .
The bug is not being closed as work will continue on fixing it for the next release, Hardy Heron (8.04). If the state of this bug should change such that it qualifies for the SRU process, please contact the person who originally declined it and ask them to re-evaluate it. To help improve the state of this bug see: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/HowToTriage .

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

Upstream's input-hotplug+HAL was not stable enough for Hardy so we've postponed the work until Hardy+1. Additionally, I'm not certain the wacom driver was updated to take advantage of input hotplug anyway.

Anyway, this bug cannot be solved for hardy, so we need to postpone it.

If wacom input-hotplug is still not ready in hardy+1, an alternative would be to create an xorg.conf modification utility (similar to displayconfig-gtk but for general changes including input devices). Depending on how things look in the next xorg release, I may open a specification for that.

[Square Bottle (squarebottle)]

All you need to do is uncomment those lines in xorg.conf and it works, so
why not just do that? Or, why not just go back to what Feisty did, since it
worked?

On Mon, Mar 10, 2008 at 10:45 PM, Bryce Harrington <
<email address hidden>> wrote:

> Upstream's input-hotplug+HAL was not stable enough for Hardy so we've
> postponed the work until Hardy+1. Additionally, I'm not certain the
> wacom driver was updated to take advantage of input hotplug anyway.
>
> Anyway, this bug cannot be solved for hardy, so we need to postpone it.
>
> If wacom input-hotplug is still not ready in hardy+1, an alternative
> would be to create an xorg.conf modification utility (similar to
> displayconfig-gtk but for general changes including input devices).
> Depending on how things look in the next xorg release, I may open a
> specification for that.
>
> --
> Gutsy Beta: Tablet Notebook's Stylus Not Working
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/145887
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

Because as Henrik said in comment #5, having those enabled by default for everyone causes breakage for accessible login.

[Square Bottle (squarebottle)]

I'm not a programmer, but it just seems like it'd be easy to conditionally
comment or decomment the lines in xorg.conf. But alright, so that isn't an
option, I get that. What about doing it the same way Feisty did it? I mean,
I'm just having a hard time wrapping my mind around why it would work fine
for Feisty and not Gutsy or even Hardy.

On Mon, Mar 10, 2008 at 11:27 PM, Bryce Harrington <
<email address hidden>> wrote:

> Because as Henrik said in comment #5, having those enabled by default
> for everyone causes breakage for accessible login.
>
> --
> Gutsy Beta: Tablet Notebook's Stylus Not Working
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/145887
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

In Feisty they were enabled by default for everyone, which is what caused the breakage that made us comment out the lines.

[Square Bottle (squarebottle)]

Alright. How hard would it be to add a "Are you using a tablet laptop?"
question to the installer? Would that be possible, perhaps? Or, if something
ran the first time the system was booted? Or, if the default homepage for
the browser had a button they could click that would uncomment it for them?
I'm just trying to think of other ways to solve the problem until a more
direct solution is implemented.

On Mon, Mar 10, 2008 at 11:59 PM, Bryce Harrington <
<email address hidden>> wrote:

> In Feisty they were enabled by default for everyone, which is what
> caused the breakage that made us comment out the lines.
>
> --
> Gutsy Beta: Tablet Notebook's Stylus Not Working
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/145887
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

Modifying the installer seems way overkill. Eventually this will be taken care of via input hotplug (maybe by Intrepid or Intrepid+1), so rejecting the release nomination for now.

[Square Bottle (squarebottle)]

Why is that overkill? The best solution would be to do it automatically, so
until that's possible, then that means not having it be automatic if you
want it to work. Surely a one-time prompt that makes things work is
preferable to never asking and not working. It's fine if you want to reject
a proposed solution, but instead of aborting all further efforts, why not
brainstorm a little to help come up with a solution to implement at least
until having it be automatic is possible?

On Wed, Apr 2, 2008 at 2:35 AM, Bryce Harrington <email address hidden>
wrote:

> Modifying the installer seems way overkill. Eventually this will be
> taken care of via input hotplug (maybe by Intrepid or Intrepid+1), so
> rejecting the release nomination for now.
>
> ** Changed in: xorg (Ubuntu Hardy)
> Status: Confirmed => Won't Fix
>
> ** Changed in: xorg (Ubuntu)
> Importance: Low => Wishlist
>
> --
> Gutsy Beta: Tablet Notebook's Stylus Not Working
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/145887
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>

[Timo Aaltonen (tjaalton)]

Should be fixed in Intrepid, which now uses input-hotplug.