How do I change xsetwacom and make the settings stay on startup?

I am running Ubuntu 10.10 and finally got a Wacom Bamboo Pen & Touch tablet to work.

However, I would like to change some settings (assign buttons;remove touch feature;...) and make them stay on startup. How can I do this?

Thank you very much for your patience.

Solution 1:

Write xsetwacom commands into ~/.xinitrc.

xsetwacom deliberately doesn't keep settings between X server restarts. The easiest (and safest) way to get stable settings is to just stick your list of xsetwacom commands into a shell script and add it to your startup applications.

Alternatively, you can bypass xsetwacom comletely and put your tablet settings in /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-wacom.conf -- the "wacom" manpage lists the option lines. As always, be careful and remember that a poorly formed conf can render your device unusable.

Solution 2:

For me, the cleanest way seems to be to provide the settings as options to the X server.

1. Find out your device identifier. For this, look into your /var/log/Xorg.0.log for a line that mentions your Wacom tablet's product identifier, such as "Using input driver 'wacom' for '…'". Or simply use the product identifier reported by xinput --list but omit the "touch" at the end. That suffix is rather the mode of the product and not part of its identifier; modes can be touch, pen, eraser, cursor.

2. Find the options to use. The option names are different from those supplied to xsetwacom, but they can be converted automatically. For that, use xsetwacom as you did to configure your device as needed, and then use the following command (with your own product identifier) to list its configuration in the format needed by the Xorg configuration file:

   xsetwacom --get <productid> all
   

3. Create a file /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-local-tweaks.conf, or however you want to name it.

   You may have to create the /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/ directory. That's the new proper place to put these configuration files – no longer /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/ as mentioned in the other answer from 2010.

4. Fill the file with the options to configure it. You would insert them as "Option" lines into a framework like below:

   Section "InputClass"
       Identifier "local wacom tablet tweaks"
   
       # Product to configure – supply your own product identifier.
       MatchProduct "Serial Wacom Tablet WACf00c"
   
       # Driver to use for this device.
       # (Identical to the default, so not essential to mention.)
       Driver "wacom"
   
       # Configuration opttions to use – supply your own.
       Option "Gesture" "off"
   EndSection