program and system crashes of Knoppix 6.4DVD with Hyundai mouse/pen tablet

[otropogo]

Have just bought a mouse/pen tablet from www.hg-hyundai.com, it's 800dpi and has a small tablet built into the centre of the mouse. Haven't found any model number on it or in the packing or documentation (entirely in simplified Chinese).The mouse seems to work normally under Puppy Linux 4.3.1, but there's no support for the tablet.

I booted Knoppix 6.4 from Flash in the hope that it would have some native support. Instead, the cursor went bananas on opening Libre Office Draw(?). The cursor ran all over the display uncontrollably, the windows continually enlarged multiplied and minimized, and I had to replace the mouse to close the program. I then found I couldn't get online with any browser, nor could I shut down or reboot - I got an "out of space" error. Yet when I checked the USB stick, it showed 3.8GB free... I finally had to yank the power cord out to regain control to reboot.

After rebooting, I tried localization and also Kiten. The first crashed immeditatelyu, without even an error message to report, the second let me get in one keystroke before crashing. However, it did the same with a vanilla mouse when I tried it again.

I've installed the Chinese software (which advertises support for W2K, XP, and Vista) but can't figure out what to do to use the tablet for its primary purpose - Chinese character input. I can draw the characters on the tablet, and they appear ok on screen, but Windows 7 doesn't know what to do with them. The maker's website is no help.


Would welcome any help getting Chinese character support in Linux or Windows for this tablet. I know it works, because they demonstrated it to me at a shop here (in China) on a Lenovo laptop. But there's nobody there with enough English to help me get this working in English Windows, let alone Linux.

[utu]

http://www.autoblog.com/2010/04/01/2...ltimedia-tabl/

[otropogo]

http://www.autoblog.com/2010/04/01/2...ltimedia-tabl/

Sorry, I can't seem to grasp your meaning. I assumed the heading "LOOK AT THE DATE" was referring to your link, but it doesn't appear in the quotes. And I can't recognize anything in the Hyundai car ad that has relevance to the mouse/pen-pad issues I describe.

[Forester]

Sorry, I can't seem to grasp your meaning.

It's a utu post. These are often off topic or have weak grasp of the wrong end of the stick of meaning.

I can't recognize anything in the Hyundai car ad that has relevance to the mouse/pen-pad issues I describe.

Good. You are not losing your mind.

I assumed the heading "LOOK AT THE DATE" was referring to your link, but it doesn't appear in the quotes.

In some cultures the date 2010/04/01 represents 1 April 2010. In Western cultures this date is well known: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_Fools%27_Day.

I thought in nettiquette a smiley is supposed to be used to indicate a statement is either humorous or not to taken literally. It would serve utu right if no one took any notice of anything he posts.

I have to go do work now but will try to respond later. It seems all the other children on this forum think a tablet is some kind of apple.

[klaus2008]

I suppose that your tablet is a USB device. In that case I would start Knoppix without the tablet plugged in, change to virtual console 12 and plug in the tablet. If the device is recognised, you should get some information about the hardware. I would suggest that you write down this information or take a photograph of the screen which you can examine later.

I hope that this helps to identify your hardware.

[Forester]

Hi otropogo,

klaus2008 is right that we need to find out what kind of device Linux thinks your tablet is. I think it is fairly safe to say Linux knows your tablet is there, otherwise your cursor wouldn't have gone bananas.

I'm going to start at the other end. Most tablets of this sort are/were made by a Japanese company called Wacom. Just 'cos your says Hyundai on the outside doesn't mean it isn't Wacom on the inside. In the day, xorg.conf contained a configuration section for wacom tablets and they worked 'out of the box'.

On my Debian, if I type:

dpkg -l | fgrep xserver-xorg-input

I get the list:

ii  xserver-xorg-input-all               1:7.5+8                           the X.Org X server -- input driver metapackage
ii  xserver-xorg-input-evdev             1:2.3.2-6                         X.Org X server -- evdev input driver
ii  xserver-xorg-input-kbd               1:1.4.0-2                         X.Org X server -- keyboard input driver
ii  xserver-xorg-input-mouse             1:1.5.0-2                         X.Org X server -- mouse input driver
ii  xserver-xorg-input-synaptics         1.2.2-2                           Synaptics TouchPad driver for X.Org server
ii  xserver-xorg-input-wacom             0.10.5+20100416-1                 X.Org X server -- Wacom input driver

So if I had a Wacom tablet, I know my X-org server has the right driver for it. When I do the same with my Knoppix 6.4.4, I get a different list and there is no xserver-xorg-input-wacom. I need to install it.

It may be that installing the driver is enough but I suspect not. I suspect I would need to alter the X-11 configuration to tell it what capabilities my tablet has. If my tablet were a Wacom device, then I'd use the notes on https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Wacom for Ubuntu 10.10 as a starting point. There are guides for other distributions, which might help with the little details. I ought to be able to find all I need on http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/linuxwacom but the information there might not be so user friendly.

How would I find out what kind of tablet I have ? Well, the suggestion by Klaus2008 is valid. Myself, I would use ctrl+alt+F2 to get to a text console and type in lsusb before and after plugging in the tablet. The difference should tell me what kind of device I have. I might do that same with dmesg | tail to get a second opinion.

Now, with that information I'd have to look at the installed (and not installed) drivers for input devices that are available to see if mine is covered. Knoppix appears to have several drivers that might be for pen or tablet devices already installed.

To get the full list of installed and not-installed drivers, type in:

 dpkg -l 'xserver-xorg-input-*'

You may find xserver-xorg-input-wacom is not listed. The X server in Knoppix 6.4.4 is the very latest and not all drivers have been updated to work with it. Knoppix 6.4.4 was released on the 31th January and included all the drivers that were available at the time. The Wacom driver came out on the 2nd February.

You would need to do:

sudo apt-get update

to update the package lists in order to list what drivers are currently available (and eventually install one of them). We have to hope that the driver for your tablet it there and once installed the banana cursor will go away.

If things still are not working there are other things we can try but I think you have enough for now.