Linux on a Fujitsu U810 - Touchscreen II

2009.04.20 update: disregard this entry and go to read the better Linux on a Fujitsu U810 - Touchscreen III



The rest of this entry is obsolete.

This is a follow up of this previous entry, so make sure you read both!

1 Source code for u810_tablet kernel module

You can find here the source code for the u810_tablet kernel module. I'm willing to update it with any suggestions or improvements anyone may suggest.

Latest version: 0.2.3 (2009.04.15)

To compile the module:

- make sure you have the linux development environment installed; I would suggest to install the packages using synaptics package manager, and select linux-headers, gcc

- uncompress the downloaded file, cd to the newly created directory and just type
# make

and as root,
# make install

To load the new module, just unload the old one and load the new one:
as root:
# rmmod u810_tablet
# modprobe u810_tablet

To have the module load correctly on boot, follow step 3 described in this previous post

Read Developer Notes at the end of this post for some module parameters documentation


2 regarding step 4 of this previous entry, i have found that:

- using the evdev module, xournal works very well but the module doesn't work as expected, since last clicked coordinates remain in memory, so when you lift the pen and press in another area, the computer thinks you selected the whole area

- using the evtouch module, the touchscreen also works very well, but for an unkown reason xournal does not work; I haven't tried any other inking software

I'm currently investigating this issue because in both causes there are annoying effects.

- in order to have the u810_tablet work with xorg-evdev module, use this file as /etc/hal/fdi/policy/u810_tablet.fdi

- in order to have the u810_tablet work with xorg-evtouch module, use this file as /etc/hal/fdi/policy/u810_tablet.fdi


It is interesting to play with "System -> Preferences -> Mouse -> Accessibility Tab -> Trigger secondary click by holding down the primary button" option when working with evdev module, to make a long press act as right-click.


Developer notes

u810_tablet module info

- parameters
orientation=normal:0|right:1|inverted:2|left:3
maxx,maxy,minx,miny (when normal)
printpos=0|1, to print via /var/log/kern.log x/y coordinates, for debugging


$ ls -l /sys/module/u810_tablet/parameters/
total 0
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4096 2009-04-15 20:02 orientation
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4096 2009-04-15 20:02 printpos
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4096 2009-04-15 20:02 touch_maxx
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4096 2009-04-15 20:02 touch_maxy
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4096 2009-04-15 20:02 touch_minx
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4096 2009-04-15 20:02 touch_miny

To change touchscreen orientation
# echo "1" > orientation