Wacom Bluetooth pad

I wanted a pad I could write with a pencil, and so I noted that Wacom Tablet is in all of the distros as an option in the settings so I reasoned that that is the obvious choice. I had tried a plug in one and got it working a few years ago (with some kind online help) and so surely now it will be just plug and play.

I have two computers, one with Ubuntu and one with Fedora. I checked that the pad and pen work in Windows and it worked fine, so I went and tried in Ubuntu. No go, it can sortof connect but even when connected the blue light is still flashing which it wasn’t when connected within Windows.

It’s OK, I reasoned, I will try it in Fedora when I get home.

Tried it in xfce (I have to login to xfce before it allows me into Gnome (long story since latest upgrade)). Connected then immediately disconnected due to a “Connection Failed: br-connection-create-socket”

So I go into Gnome and finally it connects - thank goodness, strong blue light of connection, but no the pen doesn’t work on it, so it is connected but not able to be written on.

So my obvious question is: do I need to install something even with a bluetooth connection? And if so what (coz I cannot find this issue anywhere)? And how is this a problem? The Wacom Tablet refuses to even acknowledge that the tablet is even there. Why would Gnome have Wacom Tablets as an entire section to themselves if they do not plug and play?

Funnily enough I logged out then back into xfce to get the actual error message above, and the connection persisted from Gnome to xfce, (but still no pen working), so I had to disconnect and try and connect again to get the error message above. Truly weird!

To be fair, it doesn’t work in Gnome or xfce either.

Strange, Wacom tablets should work out of the box, since as far as I know Wacom contributes their drivers to the kernel.

Can it be connected via cable? Does it have a wireless dongle? If so, and it still isn’t working, maybe you can try out OpenTabletDriver.

You should also specify what model you have.

Yeah weird I know. It doesn’t work on Ubuntu or Fedora, but does on Windows.
Model is Wacom intuos S BT CTL-4100WL

It is good practive to provide the output of inxi -Fzxx (pasted as preformatted test using the </> button). This helps others with the same hardware and issues find this thread, and sometimes there are conflicts with specific hardware.

Do you use Wayland or Xorg?

Look at the FAQ and troubleshooting sections of Linux Wacom Project.

If that doesn’t solve your problem, try to find relevant journalctl entries. This will require some effort, as journalctl produces enormous detail. You should run man journactl in a terminal and read the explanations for the options suggested here so you understand them.

First, check journalctl --no-hostname -b -p 3. You may need to search for discussion of any messages that appear – many (but not all) may be harmless. Then try searching for relevant strings using journalctl --no-hostname -b -g <string>.

I use Wayland mostly though I would be happy enough if it worked in either.
I will try the journalctl when I get a chance.
I have no idea what inxi -Fzxx (pasted as preformatted test using the </> button) even means, I’m sorry, I just saw that Wacom was embedded and bought a bluetooth pad expecting it to work. I would happily work through a fix, but it seems that it is just me, and the Fedora machine and the Ubuntu machine I have - strangely the same problem on both.

Open your terminal and type: inxi -Fzxx
If it’s not installed, you will be requested to install it. Type y to install
You can also simply install it by entering the following in your terminal sudo dnf -y install inxi) More info: Use inxi to Get All Kind of System Information in Linux

Copy and paste the output of inxi -Fzxx in your reply. Select the output and use the button </> to add a “`” at the beginning and end of the output, for easier readability. The button is visible in the toolbar of your reply.

The LHDB has 51 probes that include this pad, including Fedora 38. Most probes just show “detected”, only a few show “working”, but the LHDB can’t provide much detail unless users manually add it.

‘greg@greg-BOHL-WXX9:~$ inxi -Fzxx
System:
Kernel: 6.5.0-28-generic x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: N/A Desktop: GNOME 42.9
tk: GTK 3.24.33 wm: gnome-shell dm: GDM3
Distro: Ubuntu 22.04.4 LTS (Jammy Jellyfish)
Machine:
Type: Laptop System: HUAWEI product: BOHL-WXX9 v: M1020
serial:
Mobo: HUAWEI model: BOHL-WXX9-PCB v: M1020 serial:
UEFI: HUAWEI v: 1.17 date: 02/21/2023
Battery:
ID-1: BAT1 charge: 14.2 Wh (33.9%) condition: 41.9/41.6 Wh (100.9%)
volts: 12.2 min: 11.5 model: DYNAPACK HB4692J5ECW-31 serial:
status: Charging
CPU:
Info: 6-core model: AMD Ryzen 5 4500U with Radeon Graphics bits: 64
type: MCP arch: Zen 2 rev: 1 cache: L1: 384 KiB L2: 3 MiB L3: 8 MiB
Speed (MHz): avg: 1448 high: 1700 min/max: 1400/2375 boost: enabled
cores: 1: 1397 2: 1700 3: 1397 4: 1397 5: 1400 6: 1397 bogomips: 28446
Flags: avx avx2 ht lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 sse4a ssse3 svm
Graphics:
Device-1: AMD Renoir vendor: QUANTA driver: amdgpu v: kernel pcie:
speed: 16 GT/s lanes: 16 ports: active: HDMI-A-1 off: eDP-1 empty: none
bus-ID: 03:00.0 chip-ID: 1002:1636
Device-2: IMC Networks ov9734_azurewave_camera type: USB driver: uvcvideo
bus-ID: 1-4:3 chip-ID: 13d3:56f9
Display: x11 server: X.Org v: 1.21.1.4 compositor: gnome-shell driver: X:
loaded: amdgpu,ati unloaded: fbdev,modesetting,radeon,vesa gpu: amdgpu
display-ID: :0 screens: 1
Screen-1: 0 s-res: 1920x1080 s-dpi: 96
Monitor-1: HDMI-A-0 mapped: HDMI-A-1 model: SSN-24 res: 1920x1080 dpi: 93
diag: 604mm (23.8")
OpenGL: renderer: RENOIR (renoir LLVM 15.0.7 DRM 3.54 6.5.0-28-generic)
v: 4.6 Mesa 23.2.1-1ubuntu3.1~22.04.2 direct render: Yes
Audio:
Device-1: AMD Renoir Radeon High Definition Audio vendor: QUANTA
driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel pcie: speed: 16 GT/s lanes: 16
bus-ID: 03:00.1 chip-ID: 1002:1637
Device-2: AMD Raven/Raven2/FireFlight/Renoir Audio Processor
vendor: QUANTA driver: N/A pcie: speed: 16 GT/s lanes: 16 bus-ID: 03:00.5
chip-ID: 1022:15e2
Device-3: AMD Family 17h HD Audio vendor: QUANTA driver: snd_hda_intel
v: kernel pcie: speed: 16 GT/s lanes: 16 bus-ID: 03:00.6 chip-ID: 1022:15e3
Sound Server-1: ALSA v: k6.5.0-28-generic running: yes
Sound Server-2: PulseAudio v: 15.99.1 running: yes
Sound Server-3: PipeWire v: 0.3.48 running: yes
Network:
Device-1: Realtek RTL8822CE 802.11ac PCIe Wireless Network Adapter
vendor: & Tele RSH driver: rtw_8822ce v: N/A pcie: speed: 2.5 GT/s lanes: 1
port: 2000 bus-ID: 01:00.0 chip-ID: 10ec:c822
IF: wlp1s0 state: up mac:
Bluetooth:
Device-1: Realtek Bluetooth Radio type: USB driver: btusb v: 0.8
bus-ID: 3-2:3 chip-ID: 1358:c123
Report: hciconfig ID: hci0 rfk-id: 0 state: up address:
bt-v: 3.0 lmp-v: 5.1 sub-v: 6d7d
Drives:
Local Storage: total: 476.94 GiB used: 231.66 GiB (48.6%)
ID-1: /dev/nvme0n1 vendor: Samsung model: MZVLB512HBJQ-00000
size: 476.94 GiB speed: 31.6 Gb/s lanes: 4 serial: temp: 48.9 C
Partition:
ID-1: / size: 371.85 GiB used: 231.58 GiB (62.3%) fs: ext4
dev: /dev/nvme0n1p4
ID-2: /boot/efi size: 299.8 MiB used: 79.5 MiB (26.5%) fs: vfat
dev: /dev/nvme0n1p1
Swap:
ID-1: swap-1 type: file size: 2 GiB used: 0 KiB (0.0%) priority: -2
file: /swapfile
Sensors:
System Temperatures: cpu: N/A mobo: N/A gpu: amdgpu temp: 49.0 C
Fan Speeds (RPM): N/A
Info:
Processes: 368 Uptime: 4m Memory: 14.99 GiB used: 5.43 GiB (36.2%)
Init: systemd v: 249 runlevel: 5 Compilers: gcc: 11.4.0 alt: 11/12
Packages: 3421 note: see --pkg apt: 3295 flatpak: 100 snap: 26 Shell: Bash
v: 5.1.16 running-in: gnome-terminal inxi: 3.3.13’

I can connect via the bluetoothctl command but it disconnects saying “Connection Failed: br-connection-create-socket” after a few seconds.

Also it can connect into Android Mode if I connect the tablet through a cable

Please post terminal output as pre-formatted text (just bracket the text with triple backquotes). Looks like you ran inxi on your Ubuntu system, but both Ubuntu and Fedora 40 have btusb (Generic Bluetooth USB driver) version 0.8.

Have you tried manually switching the Android/Linux modes Android misdetect. This mentions a fix using fwupd 1.6.2 or later. Fedora 40 has:

Installed Packages
Name         : fwupd
Version      : 1.9.19
Release      : 1.fc40
Architecture : x86_64
Size         : 7.3 M
Source       : fwupd-1.9.19-1.fc40.src.rpm
Repository   : @System
From repo    : updates
Summary      : Firmware update daemon
URL          : https://github.com/fwupd/fwupd
License      : LGPL-2.1-or-later
Description  : fwupd is a daemon to allow session software to update device firmware.

Use sudo fwupdtool get-updates to check for available updates.

If that doesn’t help, you need to file a bug report, but that requires more details. It isn’t clear if the issue is specific to your bluetooth hardware, the btusb driver, or the Wacom firmware. You should be able to get the required details by running journalctl in a terminal and searching (type /btusbthen press “Enter”). journalctl captures a huge amount of data, so you need to select just the records relevant to your problem.