Pen crazy in tablet PC, Lucid

[Saleel Velankar]

Frequently pen stops working correctly and it goes crazy in my IBM thinkpad X41 Tablet.
When you put pen near to screen it starts selecting areas and a lot of strange clicks are sent to desktop.

I have tried restarting x, but the only thing that seems to fix this is a fresh reboot. This happens under the following condition:
Screen is locked/ turned off; screensaver is activated, powercord is removed and the laptop changes to battery mode.

This bug is identical to the old: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xf86-input-wacom/+bug/234466.

Looking through the info provided in the old bug:

xserver-xorg-input-wacom version: 1:0.10.5-0ubuntu4
Ubuntu Lucid up to date.

Please tell me what other information I should attach.

[Jonas Oberschweiber (jonas-frozenbeetle)]

I get the same behavior here, but it happens very quickly (2-3 minutes after I start using the pen) and without me doing anything like locking the screen or removing the powercord. The tablet is practically unusable.

[Jonas Oberschweiber (jonas-frozenbeetle)]

I fixed it by disabling the sanity check in isdv4Parse in wcmISDV4.c, just removed these two lines:

 else if ((n = wcmSerialValidate(local,data)) > 0)
  return n;

[David Perkinson (davidp-reed)]

This bug seems similar to one I am now encountering after upgrading from 10.04 to 10.10. While using Xournal, the stylus will start to write while the stylus is not touching the screen. I am also getting the behavior described above. While using 10.04, I did not have this problem. The sylus would sometimes lock up, but I could fix this by causing the laptop to sleep, then awaken. That trick does not work for me with 10.10. I need to reboot X or reboot entirely.

I cannot reliably reproduce the behavior, but it happens often after I use a projector (changing resolution), then having the laptop sleep. Sometime after awakening again, I often (daily) get this behavior.

I am using a X200t., Linux 2.6.35-25-generic #44-Ubuntu SMP Fri Jan 21 17:40:44 UTC 2011 x86_64 GNU/Linux. Xorg.0.log contains may line like the following once the bahvior starts:

  5808.771] (WW) Serial Wacom Tablet touch: bad data at 2 v=a3 l=9
[ 5808.800] (WW) Serial Wacom Tablet touch: bad data at 2 v=a3 l=9
[ 5808.890] (WW) Serial Wacom Tablet touch: bad data at 3 v=a0 l=9
[ 5808.930] (WW) Serial Wacom Tablet touch: bad data at 8 v=a0 l=9
[ 5809.037] (WW) Serial Wacom Tablet touch: bad data at 7 v=a0 l=9
[ 5809.151] (WW) Serial Wacom Tablet touch: bad data at 7 v=a3 l=9
[ 5809.190] (WW) Serial Wacom Tablet touch: bad data at 7 v=91 l=9
[ 5809.270] (WW) Serial Wacom Tablet touch: bad data at 2 v=a3 l=9
[ 5809.329] (WW) Serial Wacom Tablet touch: bad data at 1 v=a3 l=9

I don't see anything unusual with dmesg.

xyzzy> xinput --list
⎡ Virtual core pointer id=2 [master pointer (3)]
⎜ ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer id=4 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint id=10 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ Serial Wacom Tablet stylus id=14 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ Serial Wacom Tablet eraser id=12 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ Serial Wacom Tablet touch id=13 [slave pointer (2)]
⎣ Virtual core keyboard id=3 [master keyboard (2)]
    ↳ Virtual core XTEST keyboard id=5 [slave keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Power Button id=6 [slave keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Video Bus id=7 [slave keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Sleep Button id=8 [slave keyboard (3)]
    ↳ AT Translated Set 2 keyboard id=9 [slave keyboard (3)]
    ↳ ThinkPad Extra Buttons id=11 [slave keyboard (3)]

[David Perkinson (davidp-reed)]

After living with this bug for longer now, I do not think it is associated with connection to a projector. The problem occurs (eventually) after putting the laptop to sleep. The only way I have found to fix the stylus once it gets into its jumping mode is to issue the following commands:

> xrandr --output LVDS1 --rotate left
> xrandr --output LVDS1 --rotate normal

It's awkward but better than having to reboot after sleeping in order to use the stylus.

[Bjarke Todbjerg Nielsen (todbjerg)]

I am experiencing this problem too on my IBM Thinkpad X41 Tablet running Ubuntu 11.04. Maybe once or twice a day the cursor will begin flickering and skipping between the corner of the screen and the stylus issuing seemingly random button events.
The error messages in the Xorg log are exactly the same as reported by David Perkinson.

The only thing that really seems to take care of the problem (temporarily) is to suspend and resume the computer.

bjarke@tabix:~$ uname -a
Linux tabix 2.6.38-8-generic #42-Ubuntu SMP Mon Apr 11 03:31:50 UTC 2011 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux

bjarke@tabix:~$ xinput --list
⎡ Virtual core pointer id=2 [master pointer (3)]
⎜ ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer id=4 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint id=10 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ Serial Wacom Tablet stylus id=13 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ Serial Wacom Tablet eraser id=12 [slave pointer (2)]
⎣ Virtual core keyboard id=3 [master keyboard (2)]
    ↳ Virtual core XTEST keyboard id=5 [slave keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Power Button id=6 [slave keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Video Bus id=7 [slave keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Sleep Button id=8 [slave keyboard (3)]
    ↳ AT Translated Set 2 keyboard id=9 [slave keyboard (3)]
    ↳ ThinkPad Extra Buttons id=11 [slave keyboard (3)]

[Bjarke Todbjerg Nielsen (todbjerg)]

Just about a week ago I installed an older version of GNU/Linux (Slackware 13.0) on a separate partition and installed the old linuxwacom driver. Since then I haven't experienced any problems using the Wacom whatsoever.

bjarke@tabix:~$ uname -a
Linux tabix 2.6.39.1 #8 SMP Sat Jun 18 17:46:37 CEST 2011 i686 Intel(R) Pentium(R) M processor 1.60GHz GenuineIntel GNU/Linux

bjarke@tabix:~$ X -version
X.Org X Server 1.6.3
Release Date: 2009-7-31
X Protocol Version 11, Revision 0
Build Operating System: Slackware 13.0 Slackware Linux Project
Current Operating System: Linux tabix 2.6.39.1 #8 SMP Sat Jun 18 17:46:37 CEST 2011 i686
Build Date: 03 August 2009 06:51:50PM

The linuxwacom package is version 0.8.6-2.

[_matthias (mspharma)]

Could it be a hardware problem:

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=90725