Installing input wacom from source

The input-wacom driver is a set of loadable kernel modules which allows new tablets to be used with systems using kernels as old as Linux 3.7. While this gets many of the updates that are pushed to the upstream Linux kernel driver, some differences may exist. This will be particularly apparent for users of older kernels. Because of this, we recommend upgrading your kernel if possible and only installing this driver when absolutely necessary.

This driver builds two separate kernel modules: wacom.ko and wacom_w8001.ko. The former is used for the vast majority of tablets (USB-attached for 3.7 - 3.16; USB/Bluetooth/I2C-attached for 3.17+), while the latter is used for older tablet PCs whose digitizers are connected via an internal serial interface. The hid-wacom.ko and wacom_i2c.ko modules (legacy modules for Bluetooth and I2C tablets, respectively) are ''not'' included with this driver.

Installation

Prerequisites

Before building, you'll need to ensure the necessary dependencies have been installed on your system:

# Debian, Ubuntu, and Mint users:
sudo apt-get install build-essential autoconf linux-headers-$(uname -r)

# RHEL, CentOS, and Fedora users:
sudo yum groupinstall 'Development Tools'
sudo yum install "kernel-devel-uname-r == $(uname -r)"

# Arch Linux and Manjaro users:
sudo pacman -S base-devel linux-headers

# SUSE users:
sudo zypper install --type pattern devel_basis
sudo zypper install kernel-devel

Download

In general, you should simply download and untar the latest release from the releases page. If, however, you need to build a development version of the driver you will need to install and use the "git" tool to clone a copy of our repository. The developer should provide you with a git command to perform the necessary clone.

Build / Install

Open a terminal and navigate into the extracted/cloned input-wacom directory. Next, copy and paste the following command to build and install the driver. If you get a "Build Failed" message at the end if your output, please contact the linuxwacom developers for support.

if test -x ./autogen.sh; then ./autogen.sh; else ./configure; fi && make && sudo make install || echo "Build Failed"

If your system requires kernel modules to be signed to satisfy secure boot requirements, you may need to add --with-signing-key=<trusted.priv> --with-signing-cert=<trusted.der> as arguments to the autogen and configure commands. These options should not be required on Debian-based distributions (Ubuntu, Mint, etc.). Users of Fedora, SUSE, etc. which have followed our Secure Boot tutorial should use /root/MOK.priv and /root/MOK.der as the signing key and certificate locations. Note that these options are only available with input-wacom 0.43.0 or later.

Module Loading

The updated driver should automatically load after rebooting the system. You can verify the version number of the loaded kernel module by running the following command with a tablet connected. Version numbers like "v2.00" indicate that the stock kernel module is still in use. A version number like "v2.00-0.48.0" indicates that version 0.48.0 of the input-wacom driver is loaded. Consult the "Troubleshooting" section below if the version number does not match what you expect.

grep "" /sys/module/wacom*/version

or, if you do not have a tablet attached to the computer:

modinfo wacom | grep version

Next Steps

If in the future your kernel is updated by your distribution, you will need to re-install the driver for that kernel version. To do so, rerun ./autogen.sh or ./configure and then follow the original installation instructions.

Upgrading the X driver might also be necessary. Please see the instructions for updating the xf86-input-wacom driver if you need to update your X driver.

Development

If you are developing support for new devices, please develop against upstream kernels first. See For-Developers:-Submitting-Patches

Troubleshooting

If the kernel driver does not seem to load after a reboot, please try running the following commands. This will force the kernel to reload the modules from the disk, which may be necessary if an old version is cached in your distribution's initramfs.

sudo rmmod wacom
sudo rmmod wacom_w8001
sudo modprobe wacom
sudo modprobe wacom_w8001