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 2.6.30. 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 2.6.30 - 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:

 sudo apt-get install linux-headers-$(uname -r) build-essential # on Debian, Ubuntu, Mint
 sudo yum install gcc "kernel-devel-uname-r == $(uname -r)"     # on RHEL, CentOS, Fedora
 sudo zypper install kernel-devel                               # on open SUSE 11.4
 sudo zypper install --type pattern devel_basis                 # on open SUSE 11.4

Download

Please download the latest release from the releases page and unpack it with:

 tar xjvf input-wacom-VERSION.tar.bz2
 cd input-wacom-VERSION

Build / Install

From within the extracted input-wacom directory, run the following commands to build the driver and install it where your system can find it.

Note that if the ./configure script does not exist (as will be the case with code from git or pre-release versions), you will need to run ./autogen.sh instead.

./configure make sudo make install

Module Loading

Finally, you'll need to have the module loaded by the kernel so that it can be used by the rest of the system. The easiest way to do this is to simply reboot; the kernel will automatically load the newly-installed module when necessary. Alternatively, you can use the commands below to force the running kernel to reload the module without rebooting:

 sudo modprobe -r wacom
 sudo modprobe -r wacom_w8001
 sudo modprobe wacom
 sudo modprobe wacom_w8001

To verify that the input-wacom kernel module is loaded, use the following command. The output should look something like "v2.00-0.32.0" if it was loaded correctly. A version number of just "v2.00" indicates that something went wrong and that the stock module is still in use.

cat /sys/module/wacom*/version

Extra steps for newer RHEL / CentOS / Fedora distributions

Note: This applies to Fedora 24, Fedora 25, RHEL 7.4+ and Centos 7.4+

Note: This no longer works with Fedora 26

Note that if building these distributions, you will need to rebuild your intramfs in order for the changes to be permanent. You can do this by loading the module (directly above) and then issuing the command:

sudo dracut --force

However, if you have manually installed other kernel modules, this may or may not interfere with those modules. We need to investigate further to understand how to use dracut safely.

Development

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

configure / autogen

Note that the configure script will not exist when building from git. We provide a helper autogen.sh script that wraps executing the autotools steps as well as executing the configure step. After running it, you can either install the modules as normal, or use insmod with the files directly in the build directory.

X driver

Upgrading both the kernel driver and the X driver to the same version is recommended. Please see xf86-input-wacom for the X driver required for X servers 1.7 and later.