DIGImend kernel drivers

This is a collection of graphics tablet drivers for the Linux kernel, produced and maintained by the DIGImend project. We maintain this package to provide newer drivers for older kernel versions which don't have them, and to allow users to test new drivers before we contribute them to the mainline kernel.

See the list of supported tablets on the project website.

Installing

Kernel v3.5 or newer is required.

Download appropriate files for one of the releases from the releases page. The "Download ZIP" link on the right of the GitHub page leads to the source of the current development version, use it only if you know what you're doing.

Installing Debian package

If you're using Debian or a derived distro, such as Ubuntu, and are installing a release, please use the .deb package. If you're not using a Debian-based distro, or the .deb package didn't work, you can install the driver using DKMS, or manually, as described below.

Installing from source

Source is either an unpacked release tarball (.tar.gz file), an unpacked source code archive downloaded from GitHub (.zip file), or source code checked out from Git.

Before installing from source in any way, make sure you have the headers for your kernel installed (on Debian-based systems):

sudo apt-get install -y "linux-headers-$(uname -r)"

or (on Fedora-based systems):

sudo dnf install -y "kernel-devel-uname-r == $(uname -r)"

If you get "Error: Unable to find a match" from the above command, make sure your kernel is up-to-date, and if not, update it and try again.

Installing from source with DKMS

DKMS (Dynamic Kernel Module Support) is a system for installing out-of-tree Linux kernel modules, such as DIGImend kernel drivers. It helps make sure the modules are built with correct kernel headers and are properly installed, and also automatically reinstalls the modules when the kernel is updated.

Installing with DKMS is the recommended way of installing development versions of DIGImend kernel drivers.

To install with DKMS, make sure you have the dkms package installed (on Debian-based distros):

sudo apt-get install -y dkms

or (on Fedora-based distros):

sudo dnf install -y dkms

After that, run the following command from the source directory to install:

sudo make dkms_install

Watch for any errors in the output, and if the drivers installed successfully, they will be automatically rebuilt and reinstalled each time the kernel is updated.

Installing from source manually

To install from source manually, first build the drivers. Run the following command in the source directory:

make

Then, to install the drivers, run this command in the same directory:

sudo make install

Note that if you have built and installed the drivers this way, you will need to run make clean in the source directory, and then redo the above, after each kernel upgrade.

SSL errors during installation

On Ubuntu, and possibly other distros, the driver installation process attempts to cryptographically sign the modules being installed. Most of the users don't have the system configured to support this, so during the installation they get error messages similar to these:

  INSTALL /home/danghai/digimend-kernel-drivers/hid-uclogic.ko
At main.c:160:
- SSL error:02001002:system library:fopen:No such file or directory: bss_file.c:175
- SSL error:2006D080:BIO routines:BIO_new_file:no such file: bss_file.c:178
sign-file: certs/signing_key.pem: No such file or directory

The above basically means that the system tried to sign the module, but couldn't find the key to sign with. This does not interfere with module installation and operation and can safely be ignored. That is, unless you set up module signature verification, but then you would recognize the problem, and would be able to fix it.

Configuration

After installing the drivers, make sure the previous versions of the drivers were unloaded. To do that, simply reboot the machine. Alternatively, execute the following command:

sudo modprobe -r hid-kye hid-uclogic hid-polostar hid-viewsonic

and reconnect the tablet.

If your tablet is supported, its pen will work after this, and applications will be able to recognize the pressure after appropriate configuration. Refer to the application documentation for instructions on how to do that, but in most cases it is enough to simply enable the tablet in the application.

X.org drivers

By default, your tablet will be handled by the libinput X.org driver (xserver-xorg-input-libinput package in Debian, Ubuntu, and derived distros, xorg-x11-drv-libinput in Fedora and derived distros). This driver will support reporting pen coordinates and pressure, and some frame controls.

Some tablets, however, can work with the Wacom driver, which has support for configuring pressure curves, keyboard shortcuts for buttons on the tablet frame, and other advanced features. This driver package includes configuration enabling Wacom driver for tablets that are known to work with it.

For those tablets, all you need to do is make sure the Wacom driver is installed, which is done automatically when installing the driver from the .deb package. In other cases, you can install the driver package (xserver-xorg-input-wacom or xorg-x11-drv-wacom) yourself. To verify that your tablet is handled by the Wacom driver, see if its devices appear in the output of xsetwacom list.

Enabling Wacom X.org driver

If this driver package hasn't configured your tablet to work with the Wacom driver, but you know it works, or would like to try to make it work, you can write the following to /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-tablet.conf file:

Section "InputClass"
    Identifier "Tablet"
    Driver "wacom"
    MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*"
    MatchUSBID "<VID>:<PID>"
EndSection

Here <VID> and <PID> would be the tablet's USB vendor and product IDs respectively, as seen in lsusb output. E.g. if your tablet's line in lsusb output looks like this:

Bus 001 Device 003: ID 1234:abcd

then your /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-tablet.conf should look like this:

Section "InputClass"
    Identifier "Tablet"
    Driver "wacom"
    MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*"
    MatchUSBID "1234:abcd"
EndSection

You will need to log out of your X.org session and login again, or simply restart your machine for these changes to take effect. If your configuration worked, please open an issue, or contribute code directly, to have configuration for your tablet included into this driver package.

Configuring Wacom X.org driver

If your tablet is handled by the Wacom driver, you should be able to use the xsetwacom tool to configure the advanced features.

For example, if xsetwacom list produces this output:

HID 256c:006e Pad pad                   id: 9   type: PAD
HID 256c:006e Pen stylus                id: 10  type: STYLUS

you can assign Ctrl-Z ("Undo") key combination to the fifth button on the tablet frame this way:

xsetwacom set "HID 256c:006e Pad pad" button 9 key Ctrl Z

Note that buttons are numbered 1, 2, 3, 8, 9, 10, and so on, i.e. buttons 4, 5, 6, and 7 are not used. They're reserved for vertical and horizontal scrolling events by the X server.

Another example: if xrandr output has this line:

HDMI-3 connected 1440x900+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 408mm x 255mm

you can restrict the tablet input to that display like this:

xsetwacom set "HID 256c:006e Pen stylus" MapToOutput HDMI-3

See the xsetwacom man page for more parameters and details.

Wacom GUI configuration tools

Note that so far, in most cases, graphical Wacom tablet configuration tools won't work with non-Wacom tablets, and you will need to use the xsetwacom tool, even if the Wacom X.org driver supports them.

Uninstalling

Debian package

To uninstall a Debian package simply use your favorite package-management tools.

DKMS-installed package

To uninstall a DKMS-installed package execute make dkms_uninstall as root in the package source directory.

Manually-installed package

To uninstall a manually-installed package execute make uninstall as root in the package source directory.

Upgrading / downgrading

Manually-installed package

If you've manually installed a version of this package before, please uninstall it before installing another one, using the sources you used for installation.

Building Debian package

If you're a developer, or simply want to install a development version of the drivers as a Debian package, make sure you have dpkg-dev, debhelper, and dkms packages installed, and run the following command in the source directory:

dpkg-buildpackage -b -uc

The resulting package files will be written to the parent directory.

Known issues

DKMS issues preventing correct installation

If you're installing Debian packages, or installing from source with DKMS, you might hit one of DKMS bugs which prevent some of the driver modules from installing.

They make DKMS produce messages like this:

hid-uclogic.ko:
Running module version sanity check.
Error! Module version 7 for hid-uclogic.ko
is not newer than what is already found in kernel 4.9.0-5-amd64 (7).
You may override by specifying --force.

or this:

hid-uclogic.ko.xz:
Running module version sanity check.
Error! Module version 9 for hid-uclogic.ko.xz
is not newer than what is already found in kernel 3.10.0-862.14.4.el7.x86_64 (27A2028780DCB320780F53D).

while trying to install the drivers.

Fixes for these were accepted upstream (first fix and second fix) and should eventually appear in distributions. Meanwhile, to fix the issues, you can apply these yourself, or execute the following command:

sudo sed -i \
         -e '/^get_module_verinfo()/,+3 s/\<unset res$\|\<res=()$/res=("" "" "")/' \
         /usr/sbin/dkms

Be aware that the operation of the above command is inexact, and might not work, or might break DKMS. You've been warned. In any case, simply reinstall DKMS to restore it.

Systems with Secure Boot enabled

If your system has Secure Boot enabled, then the installed driver modules won't be permitted to load. You will see messages like "Required key not available". To make them work, you will need to sign them, or disable Secure Boot entirely. See documentation for your Linux distribution on how to sign kernel modules, or documentation for your computer's UEFI firmware on how to disable Secure Boot.

Touch ring/strip scrolling doesn't work in Gnome

Scrolling with a touch ring or a touch strip doesn't work in Gnome version 3.24 and later. At the moment there doesn't seem to be a workaround beside not using Gnome.

Support

If you have any problems with the drivers, look through HOWTOs on the project website, and search for solutions and report new issues at the issues page on GitHub.

If you find somebody has already reported your issue and it's not resolved yet, leave a thumbs-up 👍 reaction on the first post in the issue. This will let developers identify popular issues and pick them first for solving!

Join the #DIGImend channel on irc.libera.chat to discuss the drivers, tablets, development, to ask for help, and to help others!