How to install Wacom Bamboo Pen

Question

I have a new Wacom Bamboo Pen. I'm using Ubuntu 10.10 64bit.

After googling a little bit, I checked that xserver-xorg-input-wacom was installed. I plugged in my tablet. I rebooted my computer. Nothing special happened. I opened Inkscape. The tablet didn't work. I opened Inkscape's Input devices dialog. I didn't understand anything. I tried to blindly click some options in that dialog but nothing seemed to have any effect. Same with Gimp.

After googling some more I found the linuxwacom website with source code, this didn't seem to work.

So... any help?

As requested:

lsusb
Bus 005 Device 002: ID 056a:00d4 Wacom Co., Ltd 

dmesg | tail
[  492.961267] usb 5-1: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 3
[  493.144862] input: Wacom Bamboo 4x5 Pen as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1a.2/usb5/5-1/5-1:1.0/input/input6
[  493.158854] input: Wacom Bamboo 4x5 Finger as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1a.2/usb5/5-1/5-1:1.1/input/input7

Solution

You need to install the wacom-dkms package from my PPA

https://launchpad.net/~doctormo/+archive/wacom-plus

You can do this by using the following commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:doctormo/wacom-plus
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install wacom-dkms

There is also an updated xorg driver for lucid available in the same ppa to fix a bunch of issues in the LTS. Please don't compile your drivers, seek help packaging them up instead so we can provide the driver fixes to everyone and hopefully fix them forever.

Comments

[Admin]

Can we please get the type of your Wacom Tablet/Pen? Also the output of lsusb, and please unplug the device, plug it back in and then post the output of dmesg | tail here. Please add/edit this directly to your question.

[Admin]

@casadraya: As a new user you're not allowed to set hyperlinks (more then one, I think) due to spam prevention. Maybe somebody with higher rep is going to edit them in for you.

[Admin]

Could you edit the post to take away the instructions to compile the driver from source? These are not good instructions and they can mess things up.

[Admin]

Thank you for your efforts here. My tablet works with your PPA (CTE-440) Graphire 4 running 10.10 on a PPC machine. Thank You! It may be worth noting for Synfig users to make sure Stylus and Screen are selected in that programs preference to be in pen mode. Again thank you for your work.

[Admin]

No luck with that. I did it, it installed the package, but I can't get the tablet to do anything at all. Tried rebooting also with no luck.

[Martin Owens -doctormo-]

If that didn't work than you may have messed up your system trying to manually compile it. Your device is known to work with that dkms package. Could you try to get it working with another machine or install?

[JanC]

I can confirm that those packages work on Ubuntu 10.10 64-bit up-to-date with the latest kernel and using a Wacom Bamboo Pen (CTL-460).

[Admin]

It worked. I went to Synaptic. Reinstalled xserver-xorg-input-wacom and then reinstalled wacom-dkms. It now works at last. Thanks a lot. By the way, why isn't this package in ubuntu by default (or at least in the official repositories)?

[Martin Owens -doctormo-]

It's a kernel modification, it should be synced back to Lucid and Maverick but I don't really know how to make the requests to do it yet.

[Bart van Heukelom]

I've installed this, but my device doesn't show up in xsetwacom list devices. The same devices works on another PC with the same Ubuntu. askubuntu.com/q/34167/2071

[Martin Owens -doctormo-]

@Bart - Does it show up without the ppa, but with the PPA it fails?

[Bart van Heukelom]

I don't remember if I tried before the PPA, but it doesn't matter. The problem was an "old" kernel version, 2.6.32-22