Why doesn’t xsetwacom work from udev?

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I made a script to rotate my Wacom Bamboo tablet 180 degrees. It works fine when I execute it as myself (user) or root, but when started from udev (i.e. when plugging the tablet into a usb port) it won’t work.

Udev rules:

SUBSYSTEMS=="usb", ATTRS{idVendor}=="056a", ATTRS{idProduct}=="00d1", ATTRS{manufacturer}=="Wacom Co.,Ltd.", RUN+="/usr/local/bin/red-wacom-bamboo.sh"

Wacom script /usr/local/bin/red-wacom-bamboo.sh:

#!/usr/bin/env bash

exec > /tmp/red-wacom.log
exec 2>&1

# I had to do this otherwise xsetwacom would say:
# "Failed to open Display ."
# Is there a way to do this without using my username?
export XAUTHORITY=/home/redsandro/.Xauthority
export DISPLAY=:0

/usr/bin/xsetwacom set "Wacom Bamboo 2FG 4x5 Pen stylus" Rotate half
/usr/bin/xsetwacom set "Wacom Bamboo 2FG 4x5 Finger touch" Rotate half

Result in /tmp/red-wacom.log:

Cannot find device 'Wacom Bamboo 2FG 4x5 Pen stylus'.
Cannot find device 'Wacom Bamboo 2FG 4x5 Finger touch'.

(Note that the error in the log means the udev rule itself is not the problem.)

I tried setting a sleep in the script, maybe it needs a few ms. But that doesn’t help.

  • Why doesn’t this script work when called directly from udev?
    • How do I fix this?
  • Can I call a script from udev as a specific user? (e.g. sync /home to external backup drive – /home/ is only visible to it’s user)
Contents hide
Answers:
Method 1
Method 2
Method 3
Method 4
Method 5

Answers:

Thank you for visiting the Q&A section on Magenaut. Please note that all the answers may not help you solve the issue immediately. So please treat them as advisements. If you found the post helpful (or not), leave a comment & I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.

Method 1

It works if you create two files, one wrapper script being called by udev, which in turns calls the actual configuration script in the background. The configuration script needs to sleep for a short while, so that X11 has time to do its job. Here’s the setup I use:

Wrapper script called by udev (/usr/local/bin/setupwacom.sh):

#!/usr/bin/env bash
/usr/local/bin/setupwacom-post-X11.sh &

Configuration script called by the wrapper script (/usr/local/bin/setupwacom-post-X11.sh): 

#!/usr/bin/env bash
sleep 2
export XAUTHORITY=/home/adrian/.Xauthority
export DISPLAY=:0
# Put your xsetwacom commands here, for example: 
xsetwacom --set "Wacom Intuos S Pad pad" Button 1 "key +ctrl +shift e"

Method 2

There is a fairly easy workaround, you can add something like this to your xorg.conf (or a file in xorg.conf.d, as I’ve done):

<a href="https://getridbug.com/cdn-cgi/l/email-protection" class="__cf_email__" data-cfemail="badbd4ced2d5d4c3faeddbcece">[email protected]</a>:/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d$ cat 55-local-wacom.conf 
Section "InputClass"
       Identifier "Wacom Left Handed"
       MatchDriver "wacom"
       Option "Rotate" "half"
EndSection

Check the wacom(4) manpage for details of all the options you can set.

(In theory, you can use MatchProduct to individually configure the touchpad, pen, eraser, etc., but when I tried that a while back, it caused Xorg to segfault. Same if I tried to float them. But you’re not doing any of that… and maybe the bug is fixed now.)

Method 3

None of the answers here worked for me, and the options I wanted to set could not be specified in xorg.conf:

$ xsetwacom -x get 'Wacom Intuos PT S Pad pad' button 1 
Button: Actions are not supported by xorg.conf. Try shell format (-s) instead.

I ended up having to start the script with a systemd service triggered by a udev rule:

$ cat /etc/udev/rules.d/99-wacom.rules
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ENV{ID_VENDOR_ID}=="056a", ENV{ID_MODEL_ID}=="0302", TAG+="systemd"

Vendor and model id can be found running lsusb with the device plugged in.

To reload udev rules:

$ udevadm control --reload-rules
$ udevadm trigger

The TAG+="systemd" enables other systemd services (system or user) to depend on the device (registers it as a device unit, see man systemd.device). To find the name of the device unit run udevadm monitor and plug in the tablet. I get

UDEV  [2918.098423] add      /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.0/usb2/2-1/2-1.3 (usb)
...

To check that systemd is picking it up do

$ systemctl status /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.0/usb2/2-1/2-1.3/
● sys-devices-pci0000:00-0000:00:1d.0-usb2-2x2d1-2x2d1.3.device - CTH-480 [Intuos Pen & Touch (S)]
   Loaded: loaded
   Active: active (plugged) since Mon 2016-06-20 11:14:20 UYT; 29min ago
   Device: /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.0/usb2/2-1/2-1.3

So the device unit is sys-devices-pci0000:00-0000:00:1d.0-usb2-2x2d1-2x2d1.3.device, and it can be used in the systemd service unit

 $ cat .config/systemd/user/wacom.service    
[Service]
Type=forking
Restart=no
ExecStart=/path/to/wacom-pad-button-setup

[Install]
WantedBy=default.target
WantedBy=sys-devices-pci0000:00-0000:00:1d.0-usb2-2x2d1-2x2d1.1.device
WantedBy=sys-devices-pci0000:00-0000:00:1d.0-usb2-2x2d1-2x2d1.2.device
WantedBy=sys-devices-pci0000:00-0000:00:1d.0-usb2-2x2d1-2x2d1.3.device

There is one device unit per usb port.

Then enable and reload the unit with systemctl --user enable wacom.service and systemctl --user daemon-reload.

The script still needs to sleep a bit for xsetwacom to find the device, and to set $DISPLAY and $XAUTHORITY. Type=oneshot works fine when plugging it in, but it doesn’t run it if the device was already plugged in when booting the computer. That is why I needed to use a user service instead of a system one, and why the unit also has WantedBy=default.target. The problem with oneshot is that it was blocking startx. Type=forking and Restart=no tells systemd not to wait for the script’s forked process to exit, so the script can then sleep in the background waiting for Xorg to start.

$ cat bin/wacom-pad-button-setup
#!/bin/rc
{
    sleep 2

    if (~ $DISPLAY ()) {
        DISPLAY=:0
        XAUTHORITY=/home/spelufo/.Xauthority
    }

    xsetwacom set 'Wacom Intuos PT S Pad pad' button 9 'button +3 -3'
    xsetwacom set 'Wacom Intuos PT S Pad pad' button 8 'button +4 -4'
    xsetwacom set 'Wacom Intuos PT S Pad pad' button 3 'button +1 -1'
    xsetwacom set 'Wacom Intuos PT S Pad pad' button 1 'button +2 -2'
} &

Method 4

When you plug in the device:

  1. Linux detects the device and creates a device entry based on udev rules.
  2. The X server detects the device.

You cannot run xsetwacom before stage 2. Your script is failing because you’re running it at stage 1, when X doesn’t know the device yet.

You can set some settings with gnome-settings-daemon. I believe it gets its notification of the new device through D-Bus, but I don’t know what the D-Bus event looks like. Try spying on the bus with dbus-monitor.

Method 5

The workaround by derobert is not suitable for all situations (if you can’t use the xorg.conf).

The proposed wrap and sleep solution by Adrian is somehow not working for me (ubuntu 16.04).

If you add this to the top of your xsetwacom script:

exec > /tmp/debug-my-script.txt 2>&1
xinput --list

You can see from the output that the xsetwacom script is somehow still executed before xinput is aware of the wacom. No matter how long you make the sleep.

What I propose here is another solution/workaround using the little program at which is simpler than the solution by spelufo (which I didn’t try) but only requires to install the at program. (sudo apt install at for debian users).

Now change your wrapper script (Adrian’s answer) to something like this:

#!/usr/bin/env bash
at now -f /usr/local/bin/setupwacom-post-X11.sh

at is normally used to schedule a command once, you can for example schedule one hour ahead by at now +1 hours -f yourscript.sh. But since you can only add minutes/hours/days/weeks I used now without addition but rely on the sleep inside the xsetwacom script.


All methods was sourced from stackoverflow.com or stackexchange.com, is licensed under cc by-sa 2.5, cc by-sa 3.0 and cc by-sa 4.0

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