aliencam dot net blog.

I just installed the newest version of Ubuntu, Karmic Koala. The website said that an install should only be about 20 minutes, so I wanted to time it. I started at 3:52, and by 4:00, the installation was “configuring apt” with the option to “skip” (I did not skip until 7 minutes later, after it had been “downloading language packs” for 5 minutes ( I only want english) :P. The installation had completed by 4:10, and I was browsing the internet by 4:12.

Computer: Thinkpad x61 Tablet with Multi-Touch (7764).

Works OOTB:
Audio
Volume keys
Tablet buttons (the “lock” button, arrow keys, and power button)
All applicable FN key combinations
“Back” and “Forward” web browsing buttons
Tablet with stylus
Tablet with touch (!) (needs to be calibrated at the edges)
Wifi
Ethernet
Bluetooth
Suspend/Hibernate (Hibernate is a little slow still, but much faster than it was in 9.04)
…and most everything else

Doesn’t Works OOTB:
Middle-mouse-scrolling (ugh.)

Anyway, it is great to have a nice clean computer to use, and I really like the new boot screens (they should have put that as the default desktop background).

Enabling Repositories

Before updating or installing any programs, you should enable more repositories. By default, you will only get security updates, recommended updates, and updates of proprietary drivers / nonfree software in the repositories. With this it is most likely that an update will not break anything new, but you will have older versions of everything.

In order to do this, go to System > Administration > Software Sources, then enter your password and go to the “Updates” tab.

Check both the “Pre-Released Updates” and the “Unsupported Updates” boxes. Pre-released updates means updates that will go into the next 6-month ubuntu release, but did not make the cut for this one, and unsupported updates are updates that are not widely tested for stability yet. Neither are necessary, but I like both of them.

Now, go to the “Third-Party Software” tab and enable both of the repositories there. These “partner repositories” enable the use of non-free software, like flash, mp3 codecs, dvd codecs, and similar. I would say these are necessary unless you want to keep your computer 100% open source (in which case I applaud you for being much more intense than I could stand to be right now).

Then, go to the “statistics” tab, and choose whether or not you want to submit statistical data to Ubuntu. I like to do this because it lets them know how many people are updating, and installing which programs from the repositories. Essentially it helps programs you like to use in the popularity contest of “default” programs.

Another optional step is to choose a different server. This can sometimes get your updates much faster, because you won’t be downloading from the same server as everyone else in the world. To do this, go back to the “Ubuntu Software” tab, and on the “Download From:” dropdown menu, choose “other” and then click “choose best server.” It will now run a series of tests to choose which server you are able to connect to and get the fastest speeds. When it finishes, it will automatically select the best choice, click “choose server,” then “close” and “close” again (the update button never works for me).

Now open up a terminal (Applications> Accessories > Terminal) and type sudo apt-get update, then sudo apt-get upgrade.

Fixing Update-Manager Behavior

I don’t like how update-manager behaves in this new version. What happens now is that once per day the update-manager window will open completely, but if you close it, you won’t see it until a week later unless you restart the computer. I prefer it to show an icon in the taskbar telling me that I need to update, and never pop up the update window.

Here are the steps to get back the old update-manager behavior (from the Release Notes):

Open a terminal (Applications > Accessories > Terminal) and enter the following:


gconftool -s --type bool /apps/update-notifier/auto_launch false


Now you will have an icon in the taskbar if you have available updates.

Restricted Extras

By default, Ubuntu can’t have certain things installed like MP3 codecs, flash player, MS fonts, and Java. You probably will want to install all of these, and thankfully if you have enabled the repositories above, there are two packages that handle most of this.
open a terminal and enter:
sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras linux-restricted-modules

enter “y” when it asks you if you want to install all the packages, then let it run.

During installation you should be prompted (in the terminal window) to setup Java, When this happens, scroll down to the bottom with either page-down or the down arrow key, then arrow to the right to get to “ok”. Hit enter, then move the selection left to “Yes” and hit enter again.

You now should be able to do these things.

I just installed OpenSolaris version 2008.05 (not the newest, the cd was given out at the ASULUG Installfest by an OpenSolaris rep) because I wanted to see how I like it. I am looking for another, lighter opperating system to supplement Ubuntu, and this is one of the first ones I have tried (SimplyMEPIS was my first test, but the newest version didn’t agree with me). Anyway, here is my first impression:

again, this is OpenSolaris 2008.05, NOT the newest version, 2008.11. I did not realize this was the old one until I had started installing it already.

I like Gnome, this is an improvement from that java desktop environment that I tried awhile back. I really did not like Solaris 10 when I tried that, mostly because of the desktop environment.

On the thinkpad x61t out of the box:

wifi works
the the trackpoint (mouse) works fine (no middle-mouse scroll, but not even ubuntu has that down OOTB)
sound DOES NOT work
tablet DOES NOT work.

the dock, with the CD drive, does work.
brightness adjustment does not work
none of the FN keys work (brightness, hibernate, sleep, lock, wireless radio)
bluetooth and wifi are stuck on (I don’t want Bluetooth on but I do want wifi…)
anything using the videocard seems to crash it.

I am currently updating the current version before I go through the upgrade process to 2008.11 version. Upgrading is not straightforward in this version, but it will be in the next version.

here are my problems with the OS itself:

device driver manager doesn’t open (I think that means there aren’t any device drivers found)
changing the visual effects settings to normal or high crashes the computer.
and I would also like to point out that the download for the updates is extremely slow, and it’s not on my end. (on ASU’s network I regularly get download speeds of 2MB/s and higher.)
random things take forever to open, or never open at all. (maybe this is due to the
hard resets, or because I’m running updates, or the hard resets during the update downloads).
Choosing a screensaver also just crashed the computer (it looks like anything that uses the videocard crashes this thing)
and when I brought the computer back up from crashing AGAIN, I couldn’t get wifi to work without toggling the wireless radio power switch on the laptop. (there aren’t any network managers that can do anything while the automagic network selector is running, and I don’t have any clue how to do anything with that)

Anyway, I’m going to bed and letting the update run overnight, hopefully I’ll wake up to a better functioning operating system. (OOTB version 2008.05 is unusable in my opinion.)

UPDATE: unfortunately, when I was playing around with the screensavers that crashed my computer, I somehow enabled one, and since that screensaver crashes my computer, I can’t open the screensaver selection menu to change/remove it, and none of the updates installed. This is just a mess, I’m going to try to download the 2008.11 version and install that.

I found a couple blogs that said they got middlemouse scrolling working on a thinkpad, but none of their methods worked on my x61Tablet with 64-bit Ubuntu 8.10 installed.  This version of ubuntu uses evdev instead of the xorg.conf file that previous versions used, so it makes configuring the middle mouse button a little bit more difficult.

The first thing you should do (just for your own records) is this command:

xinput -list-props "TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint"

that will return the properties of your trackpoint.  (change “TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint” to “DualPoint Stick” if you have an X200 or  X61s.) I did not do this before changing settings, so I don’t know what the original looks like (if you do, please post it in the comments so I can have a record of it! I posted the final results of that command at the end.)

Now, what you will need to do is create a file, /etc/hal/fdi/policy/mouse-wheel.fdi with the following command:

sudo nano /etc/hal/fdi/policy/mouse-wheel.fdi

then paste in the contents with ctrl-shift-v:

<match key="info.product" string="TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint">
<merge key="input.x11_options.EmulateWheel" type="string">true</merge>
<merge key="input.x11_options.EmulateWheelButton" type="string">2</merge>
<merge key="input.x11_options.YAxisMapping" type="string">4 5</merge>
<merge key="input.x11_options.XAxisMapping" type="string">6 7</merge>
<merge key="input.x11_options.Emulate3Buttons" type="string">true</merge>
<merge key="input.x11_options.EmulateWheelTimeout" type="string">200</merge>
</match>

save and quit by hitting ctrl-x, then “y”.

To tell you what each line does:

EmulateWheel should be pretty obvious, you don’t actually have a wheel with a trackpoint, so it emulates one

EmulateWheelButton: which button pretends to be a wheel? the mouse buttons are numbered 1 2 3 in order, so “2″ is the middle one

YAxisMapping: which directions should the y-axis go? (4 is up, 5 is down)

XAxisMapping: which directions should the x-axis go? (6 is left 7 is right)

Emulate3Buttons: actually I’m not sure what this does in conjunction with emulatewheel. It probably allows you to use middle-click still (like to close firefox tabs, or whatever else middle click does)

EmulateWheelTimeout: if the button is held for longer than the ammount of time, it switches off the middle mouse click.  Essentially, this is what turns off “middle mouse paste” when you are trying to scroll.

Now, the above configuration DOES NOT work for me, but it seems that it does for everybody else… If it still does not work for you, keep reading for the fix, and please leave a comment so I don’t feel so inept :P. What happens to me is that the xinput list-props command shows the buttons as being mapped correctly, but nothing happens in xev or in real use.  I cannot find errors in any log files or anywhere to indicate why or what is happening.

So, what I do to get it working is in the above file, change “YAxisMapping” and “XAxisMapping” to be misspelled by adding an extra “s” as such: “YAxsisMapping” “XAxsisMapping”

At this point, restart and test it again.  Just misspelling it works for many people.

If it still doesn’t work, create a new file.  This will be a shell script that is run at startup to map the horizontal scrolling correctly (If you don’t care about horizontal scrolling and only use vertical, just stop after you messed up or deleted the XAxisMapping and YAxisMapping lines).Use the following command:

nano /home/$USERNAME/.horizscrollscript

Then paste with ctrl-shift-v, or type in the following contents:

#!/bin/bash
#
#
# The following line sets the X-axis mapping to buttons 6 and 7 so that
# horizontal scrolling works.
xinput -set-int-prop "TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint" "Wheel Emulation X Axis" 8 6 7

then save and close with ctrl-X, then “Y”.  make the file executible with:

chmod +x /home/$USERNAME/.horizscrollscript

Now open the gnome sessions manager (System > Prefferences > Sessions, or alt-f2 and “gnome-session-properties”) and click “add”

for the “Name” field, name it something so you know what it does (I named it Horizontal Scroll Script).

In the “Command” field, enter the path to the file (/home/$USERNAME/.horizscrollscript)

The comment field is optional.  Save and restart, and everything should be working!

Please leave a comment if this does or does not work for you, I’m curious to know if I messed something up and that is why the first part of the tutorial doesn’t work.  ***UPDATE: It seems to work for nearly everybody except me… ugh***

To test everything, you should try this command:

xinput -list-props "TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint"

and it should return:

Device 'TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint':
Device Enabled:        1
Middle Button Emulation:        1
Middle Button Timeout:        50
Wheel Emulation Inertia:        10
Wheel Emulation:        1
Wheel Emulation X Axis:        6, 7
Wheel Emulation Y Axis:        4, 5
Wheel Emulation Timeout:        200
Wheel Emulation Button:        2
Drag Lock Buttons:        0

those bolded lines are what we were trying to get! now to test how your computer sees you use those buttons, ust the command:

xev

then you can hit keys on the keyboard and watch what it returns, or put the mouse pointer in the box that pops up and watch that as well.  You should be able to see that scrolling down is 5, up is 4, left is 6 and right is 7. (close xev with ctrl-z or by pressing the “x” on the box.)

The websites I used to formulate this approach are:

psung.blogspot.com/2008/09/scrolling-with-thinkpads-trackpoint-in.html

mvogt.wordpress.com/2008/08/15/xorg-evdev-and-emulatewheel/

***Note:  There is a bug that makes it so that middlemouse scrolling does not work sometimes after a suspend/resume.  Here is the bug report on Launchpad.  There has been a patch released for the actual xorg-evdev, but not one specifically for ubuntu (so you would have to recompile and build evdev while applying this patch at this point)  Here is the URL for the Launchpad bug:

bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xserver-xorg-input-evdev/+bug/282387

There is a temporary fix also, removing and reloading the “psmouse” module seems to fix it without suspending/resuming again, or restarting the computer.  This is kind of dangerous because it literally unloads the mouse drivers and then reloads them, so you will have to use the keyboard only to enter this in a terminal.  Use these commands:

sudo rmmod psmouse
sudo modprobe psmouse

–aliencam

The version of thinkfinger in the Ubuntu 8.10 repositories does not yet work perfectly.  You can install and configure it close to the same way that it was in 8.04, however with one (annoying) difference.  Previously, you could just slide your fingerptint and it would be entered automatically, however a bug in this version makes it so that you have to slide your finger and then press the enter key.  if this doesn’t bother you, or you want to wait for the “official fix”, the follow these instructions (directions that fix this are  further below):

sudo apt-get install thinkfinger-tools libpam-thinkfinger

tf-tool --acquire

If that gives you an error, “could not get USB device” or similar, restart and try again.  Now it will ask you to slide your finger three times, do so until it reads 3 successful swipes.Then,

tf-tool --verify

It will ask you to swipe your finger one time, to verify the data on file. You no longer have to do the “tf-tool –add-user $USERNAME” command, it has been replaced by the above two commands.

At this point, there (thankfully) is a script that edits /etc/pam.d/common-auth so we don't have to. Execute the script with the following command:

sudo '/usr/lib/pam-thinkfinger/pam-thinkfinger-enable'

At this point everything should be working, just restart and you will be able to login and sudo using your fingerprint reader (keep reading to set it up to work on wake from suspend or screensaver).

If you do not want to have to press enter every time, before you install thinkfinger-tools and libpam-thinkfinger, you need to add the following sources to “Third Party Sources” under “Software Sources”:
deb ppa.launchpad.net/jon-oberheide/ubuntu intrepid main
deb-src ppa.launchpad.net/jon-oberheide/ubuntu intrepid main

Now, in order to have the fingerprint reader work to wake up from suspend or screensaver, use the following steps:

create a group “fingerprint” with the following command:

sudo groupadd fingerprint

then create a file with:

sudo nano /etc/udev/rules.d/60-thinkfinger.rules

Then paste in the following lines (use ctrl-shift-v to paste into terminal):

#
# udev rules file for the thinkfinger fingerprint scanner
#
# gives access to the fingerprint reader to those in the “fingerprint” group
#
# Taken from:
# www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/How_to_enable_the_fingerprint_reader_with_ThinkFinger
# which was taken and modified from:
# article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.drivers.thinkfinger/329
#

# SGS Thomson Microelectronics Fingerprint Reader
SYSFS{idVendor}==”0483″, SYSFS{idProduct}==”2016″, SYMLINK+=”input/thinkfinger-%k”, MODE=”0660″, GROUP=”fingerprint”

# the also-needed uinput device
KERNEL==”uinput”, MODE=”0660″, GROUP=”fingerprint”

Exit nano with ctrl-X, and save by hitting “y”.

Now, edit /etc/pam.d/gnome-screensaver with:

<code>sudo gedit /etc/pam.d/gnome-screensaver</code>

and add the lines:

auth sufficient pam_thinkfinger.so
auth required pam_unix.so try_first_pass nullok_secure

Between the two existing lines. save and exit.

Now add each user who has a fingerprint profile, and change the file permissions with the commands:

gpasswd -a $USERNAME fingerprint
chmod +x /home/$USERNAME/.thinkfinger.bir

Restart the computer, and it should work.  If you have any more problems leave a comment and I should be able to help you, or check out these other links that may help:

www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/How_to_enable_the_fingerprint_reader_with_ThinkFinger

and the bug report for the bug that requires you to hit enter:

bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/thinkfinger/+bug/256429

There is one problem that I don’t know how to fix, every time I boot, I get an authentication box telling me that the application “Do” (I assume gnome-do) requires that the gnome-keyring be unlocked.  This only happens when you login with the fingerprint, not when you type in the password. There is no pam_gnome-keyring.so file, so I don’t know what else to add or change to get this to stop.  I will file a bug on launchpad when I get a chance.

I hope that works for everyone, it did for me!

–aliencam

NOTE: I did this yesterday, and today I noticed the fingerprint reader was getting really hot… I saw a mention of a bug that causes this on thinkwiki, but I think the problem only occurs when I am plugged in instead of on battery. I also know that turning on USB Autosuspend does solve it, and powertop will enable that for you… I will investigate further later.

further note: the problem did not persist. Enabling USB Autosuspend once seems to have fixed the problem indefinitely.  Use the powertop program and it should ask you to enable USB autosuspend if you have this problem. If not, read the thinkwiki entry on thinkfinger, and it should help. If that doesn’t help, leave a comment and I’ll get back to you.

UPDATE:
As of Feburary 16th, 2009 an update has broken functionality of thinkfinger. (it wrote over the /etc/pam.d/common-auth file) If the same thing happened to you, I wrote a post describing how to fix this problem.
http://blog.aliencam.net/2009/02/some-linux-housekeeping/

Well, I wanted to get a head start on playing with ubuntu 8.10, so that it doesn’t take me hundreds of hours this weekend to rewrite my entire ubuntu setup guide to be relevent to 8.10, so I partitioned off 10 gb and did a fresh install of ubuntu 8.10 RC last week. The first thing I set up was tablet support.

Supposedly this is more difficult in this version of Ubuntu thanks to a fancy new xorg server that ignores the xorg.conf file unless you tell it to, but you tell it to use the file by adding a server section to the xorg.conf file anyway!

This guide only activates the tablet in ubuntu 8.10, it does not do other things that I will need to do later in the xorg.conf file. (such as middle-mouse scroll, and turning off the annoying middle-mouse button = paste function)

***NOTE: ALWAYS BACKUP YOUR XORG.CONF FILE BEFORE EDITING. YOU CAN DO THIS WITH THE COMMAND:

sudo cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.backup

Then if you can’t login and need to restore the original, from a failsafe termainal login you can do:

sudo cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf.backup /etc/X11/xorg.conf

YOU MAY NOW PROCEED TO MAKING YOUR UBUNTU COMPUTER AWESOME.***

So, for archival/recovery purposes, here is my original xorg.conf with a Thinkpad x61 Tablet in Ubuntu 8.10, Intrepid Ibex:

Section "Device"
Identifier    "Configured Video Device"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier    "Configured Monitor"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier    "Default Screen"
Monitor        "Configured Monitor"
Device        "Configured Video Device"
EndSection

Of course, that does not include the  commented out parts, or any correct tab spacing (curse you wordpress!!!) but those aren’t really important.

In order to get the tablet working, you need to add at least the three pen devices (eraser, stylus, and cursor) and optionally the “touch” device (if you have a multitouch screen [is your max resolution 102x768? then you likely have multitouch])

The lines for that is as follows:

#BEGIN TABLET SECTION
Section "InputDevice"
Driver        "wacom"
Identifier    "stylus"
Option        "Device"    "/dev/input/wacom"    # USB ONLY
Option        "Type"        "stylus"
Option        "USB"        "on"        # USB ONLY
Option        "ForceDevice"    "ISDV4"        # Tablet PC ONLY
Option        "Button2"    "3"        # Added to map stylus click correctly
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Driver        "wacom"
Identifier    "eraser"
Option        "Device"    "/dev/input/wacom"   # USB ONLY
Option        "Type"          "eraser"
Option        "USB"           "on"        # USB ONLY
Option        "ForceDevice"   "ISDV4"        # Tablet PC ONLY
Option        "Button3"    "2"        # Added to map eraser correctly
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Driver        "wacom"
Identifier    "cursor"
Option        "Device"        "/dev/input/wacom"    # USB ONLY
Option        "Type"        "cursor"
Option        "USB"        "on"        # USB ONLY
Option        "ForceDevice"    "ISDV4"        # Tablet PC ONLY
EndSection
#END TABLET SECTION

And if you have a tablet PC with multitouch, before the line “#END TABLET SECTION” you can add:

# This section is for the TabletPC that supports touch
Section "InputDevice"
Driver        "wacom"
Identifier    "touch"
Option        "Device"        "/dev/input/wacom"  # USB ONLY
Option        "Type"          "touch"
Option        "ForceDevice"   "ISDV4"               # Tablet PC ONLY
Option        "USB"           "on"                  # USB ONLY
EndSection

Finally, add the server layout section to the bottom of the file so that what you just entered does something:

Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier    "Default Layout"
Screen        "Default Screen"

#Section for tablet events
InputDevice     "stylus"    "SendCoreEvents"
InputDevice     "cursor"    "SendCoreEvents"
InputDevice     "eraser"    "SendCoreEvents"
#InputDevice    "touch"        "SendCoreEvents"  #for the TabletPCs that supports touch
EndSection

If your laptop DOES have multitouch, and you want poking the screen with your finger to work, remove the “#” that is before the line InputDevice    "touch"        "SendCoreEvents"

That’s it, save and restart, and BAM!

Everything on a line after a pound sign (#)  in the above is a comment.  I have put comments in the above xorg.conf configuration so that I know what sections do what, without having to remember things.  If you want, you can remove all of the comments, but I would not suggest it because someday when  you are editing xorg.conf and xorg crashes on you and you want to figure out what you messed up, you will need that documentation.

Remember that my favorite system file editor is nano, NOT gedit.  gedit is very nice for editing normal text files, but I find that things break much more often when using a graphical text editor than a CLI one like nano.  The hardest part about nano is the keyboard shortcuts.  arrow keys to move up and down, and ctrl-shift-c for copy, ctrl-shift-v for paste, and ctrl-x for exit.  You cannot save until you exit (I think…) and when you press ctrl-x it will ask you “do you want to save this file” or something similar, press y, then where you want to save it (probably just hit enter).

So, using nano, the command to edit xorg.conf is:

sudo nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf

And just in case I was not clear enough above, here are the contents of my final xorg.conf file:



# xorg.conf (X.Org X Window System server configuration file)
#
# This file was generated by dexconf, the Debian X Configuration tool, using
# values from the debconf database.
#
# Edit this file with caution, and see the xorg.conf manual page.
# (Type “man xorg.conf” at the shell prompt.)
#
# This file is automatically updated on xserver-xorg package upgrades *only*
# if it has not been modified since the last upgrade of the xserver-xorg
# package.
#
# Note that some configuration settings that could be done previously
# in this file, now are automatically configured by the server and settings
# here are ignored.
#
# If you have edited this file but would like it to be automatically updated
# again, run the following command:
#   sudo dpkg-reconfigure -phigh xserver-xorg

Section "Device"
Identifier    "Configured Video Device"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier    "Configured Monitor"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier    "Default Screen"
Monitor        "Configured Monitor"
Device        "Configured Video Device"
EndSection

#BEGIN TABLET SECTION
Section "InputDevice"
Driver        "wacom"
Identifier    "stylus"
Option        "Device"    "/dev/input/wacom"    # USB ONLY
Option        "Type"        "stylus"
Option        "USB"        "on"        # USB ONLY
Option        "ForceDevice"    "ISDV4"        # Tablet PC ONLY
Option        "Button2"    "3"        # Added for stylus click
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Driver        "wacom"
Identifier    "eraser"
Option        "Device"    "/dev/input/wacom"   # USB ONLY
Option        "Type"          "eraser"
Option        "USB"           "on"        # USB ONLY
Option        "ForceDevice"   "ISDV4"        # Tablet PC ONLY
Option        "Button3"    "2"        # Added for eraser working
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Driver        "wacom"
Identifier    "cursor"
Option        "Device"        "/dev/input/wacom"    # USB ONLY
Option        "Type"        "cursor"
Option        "USB"        "on"        # USB ONLY
Option        "ForceDevice"    "ISDV4"        # Tablet PC ONLY
EndSection

# This section is for the TabletPC that supports touch
Section "InputDevice"
Driver        "wacom"
Identifier    "touch"
Option        "Device"        "/dev/input/wacom"  # USB ONLY
Option        "Type"          "touch"
Option        "ForceDevice"   "ISDV4"               # Tablet PC ONLY
Option        "USB"           "on"                  # USB ONLY
EndSection
#END TABLET SECTION

Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier    "Default Layout"
Screen        "Default Screen"
#    InputDevice    "Synaptics Touchpad"

#added to get tablet working
InputDevice     "stylus"    "SendCoreEvents"
InputDevice     "cursor"    "SendCoreEvents"
InputDevice     "eraser"    "SendCoreEvents"
InputDevice    "touch"        "SendCoreEvents"
EndSection

Hope this helps, I don’t think there is another guide for it online yet.

–aliencam

Final Note:

I wrote this guide in Noble Library on ASU’s campus this morning, and I lost my laptop’s stylus while I was there… So far it has not shown up in any of the lost and founds around campus, and it was not in the study room where I was working, so it looks like I need a new one… The problem is that I don’t have any money right now, the pen costs $50, and I need it to take notes in many of my classes… If this  guide helped you out, and you need web hosting, please consider using the bluehost affiliate link in the right sidebar.  Bluehost is great for very cheap unlimited hosting, (I think about $90/yr) and if one person were to sign up, the affiliate program would pay me enough to afford a new digitizer pen for my laptop. The stylus is also on my amazon wishlist at the link at the top of the page, and here

Here is my xorg.conf file with Touch disabled.  I am posting this because there are problems with wordpress messing up quotation marks and indentations/tab spacing in the things I have posted, causing people who copy-pasted from my blog to only be able to boot in low-graphics mode.

xorg.conf

UPDATE 01.07.2008: I just updated the xorg.conf sections in this post to include “code” tags, so now it should be okay to copy-paste directly from here. Double check that it is not still pasting “smart-quotes” before saving the changes, but hopefully that shouldn’t happen.

Also, one commenter has said that the buttons on their digitizer pen are mapped differently. If you could not get the eraser working, try mapping the eraser to "Button1" "3" instead of "Button3" "2"

Lenovo Fingerprint reader (Lenovo Thinkpad laptops only!)

I suggest that before you do this you practice a few times. You must swipe your entire finger, and it is going to have to be at a slow and uniform speed. My thumbprint swipe takes about one second. I would like to post a video of this because people seriously have a very hard time with it, however I do not currently have a video. And it would be boring. But if i ever come across a video of correct thumb swiping procedure, I will be sure to post it.

In a terminal, enter:
sudo apt-get install thinkfinger-tools libpam-thinkfinger

Once that is complete enter:
sudo tf-tool --acquire

It will then ask you to swipe your finger three times. Do this and it will count each successful/ failed swipe. You need three successful swipes to finish. Then enter:
sudo tf-tool --verify

This will ask you to swipe your finger once, and will tell you if it matches or does not match. Now you need to make sure it actually uses that fingerprint information in password situations.
sudo gedit /etc/pam.d/common-auth

and change the contents of the file to read like this:
auth sufficient pam_thinkfinger.so
auth required pam_unix.so nullok_secure try_first_pass
auth optional pam_smbpass.so migrate

It should only be changing the first line and adding something to the second line, so I did not back up. I would suggest backing up if you are not comfortable in being able to undo that easily. Save and close, then enter:tf-tool –add-user $USERNAME
tf-tool --add-user $USERNAME
replacing “$USERNAME” with your username (should be all lowercase)
(Note: I don’t know if this needs to have sudo before it or not, but I tried both and both gave me an error. However when I logged out my thumbprint worked, so for now ignore the error.)

Now when you log in or need to enter your password in the terminal for sudo or need to enter it for nearly everything else, you can either slide your finger or type your password. For things like the Synaptic Package Manager or the Add/Remove Programs, it will not tell you that swiping oyur fingerprint is an option, but it will work anyway. (it will just say “enter your password”)
This does not however work for the screensaver password or the sleep-mode wake up password. For that you will either have to actually type in your password, or follow this marginally simple guide: http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/How_to_enable_the_fingerprint_reader_with_ThinkFinger and go to the section titled “xscreensaver/gnome-screensaver.” This is not in this guide because I like to have to type my password after a screensaver or sleep mode, and this is after all a guide to get Ubuntu set up how I like it.