Wierd (2 me) issues attempting install touchscreen

I've installed the latest Wheezy and have been fighting for days ( nights ) now trying to get my touchscreen to function correctly. None of the tutorials I've read or been directed to seem to cover what ever is the issue here ( even it is the nut behind the keyboard ) so I'm at a loss how to remedy it and am asking for help.

Basically, when trying to install packages that I've been directed to in a tutorial, I am left with an error msg or warning that said package cannot be found. Likewise, directly downloading the .deb file and trying to install it through the Synaptics Package Manager results in nothing. As in - nothing happens.

Has anyone else seen or experienced this? Can anyone recommend a course of action to remedy it? Can someone assist in getting the touchscreen working?

I can get as far as getting it to respond, but I need to find out the name that is being reported so I can properly set it's parameters in my rc.local.

Thanks for any assistance.


EDIT -

UGH... Okay, so after more messing about I have figured out that some basic packages related to this task are missing. For instance, one cannot "lshal" because "hal" is not installed. After getting hal and some others, I am finally able to install the xinput_calibrator and use it to get the touchscreen working correctly.

Now, it seems that my struggle is _keeping_ those settings in place.

I've tried the recommended changes to Xorg.conf as well as additions to rc.local with varying degrees of limited success. In other words, I'm on the right track but am lacking some of the finer nuances ( and good graces, good looks, breeding, and money ) for making it actually correct and repeatable.

Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

EDIT2 -

So it appears that rc.local is not running when the machine boots or should I say when X starts? I'm thinking this has something to do with Xfce but I'm ingornat enough to not be so sure.

try the answers listed here , especialy third one down
askubuntu.com/questions/9853/how-can-i-m...local-run-on-startup

Dave,

Thank you very much. I tried that, with this result -

[....] Starting rc.local (via systemctl): rc.local.serviceJob for rc-local.service failed. See 'systemctl status rc-local.service' and 'journalctl -xn' for details.
failed!

Hi

Dave asked me to look at this, but I only know what he told me, because there is no info on the thread.
ie
What distro, what touchscreen, what instructions don't work and why you want to run rc.local etc.

So far as I am told you have an ELO touchscreen with a serial connection and are running the binary.hybrid.iso distro

The driver for this screen would appear to be elo.ko and it is present in /lib/modules/3.4.9-rtai/kernel/drivers/input/touchscreen/elo.ko

I have tested it and it loads

This page deals with the screen under debian (albeit KDE so you will have to substitute whatever display manager you are using in the line where kdm is stopped to do calibration)
rivendell.tryphon.org/wiki/ELO_touchscre...tup_%28debian/KDE%29

If this does not work, you will have to be specific as to what exactly the errors are etc.

regards

ArcEye wrote:

Hi

Dave asked me to look at this, but I only know what he told me, because there is no info on the thread.
ie What distro, what touchscreen, what instructions don't work and why you want to run rc.local etc.

So far as I am told you have an ELO touchscreen with a serial connection and are running the binary.hybrid.iso distro
The driver for this screen would appear to be elo.ko and it is present in /lib/modules/3.4.9-rtai/kernel/drivers/input/touchscreen/elo.ko
I have tested it and it loads

This page deals with the screen under debian (albeit KDE so you will have to substitute whatever display manager you are using in the line where kdm is stopped to do calibration) rivendell.tryphon.org/wiki/ELO_touchscre...tup_%28debian/KDE%29
If this does not work, you will have to be specific as to what exactly the errors are etc.
regards

Hi ArcEye,

Thank you for the assistance with this. From the top -

The latest binary.hybrid.iso with an Elo 1725, using serial connection.

I've started realizing that much of my confusion is occurring due to this distro being so stripped down and lacking some of the things I thought were so standard combined with a lack of available information from it being newer as well. So, when one reads and tried things like " lshal ", the added frustration of actually having to back up and apt-get install hal isn't helping things. The same thing for " inputattach ". Likewise, it's been so long since I used a *nix box that I hadn't realized things had changed so drastically. ( like udev replacing devfs ) So, stupid little things are tripping me up, like not knowing what display manager is running in order to be able to kill it with the instructions from that page.

Too, there were so many errors I was running into that I honestly believe that my install was possibly bad. So, after banging my head against the wall for days I whacked the install and installed fresh last night.

Other confusions arise from the tutorials themselves, as one weeds their way through them. That page refers one to another page to get the udev rules set up in effort to run inputattach every time the machine boots. who-t.blogspot.de/2012/07/elographics-touchscreen-setup.html And that other page ( like most of the other pages about installing a touchscreen in Debian ) refer to using " xinput-calibrator ", but trying to install it just causes more headaches since Wheezy cannot seem to find it via apt-get and then manually downloading and attempting to install the package fails because the included Synaptics Package Manager doesn't seem to actually when install it when instructed to do so.

So at this point, I've gotten to the step of killing whatever is running in place of kde. A hint of how to do so would be appreciated. (:>) What does one use in place of " /etc/init.d/kdm stop "? For that matter, what IS the display manager in this version?

Once I get there, I can let you know if there's any more errors. I can tell you this, though - at least this time when I installed, the updates and package manager are actually working and erroring out, so I have more confidence that I had a dodgy installation the last few days and that this one is working.

Thanks for any assistance you can render. I appreciate it.

EDIT -

Found it.
For someone in the future - it's /etc/init.d/lightdm stop

Found it.
For someone in the future - it's /etc/init.d/lightdm stop

OK, you are getting there.

The reason why I didn't put the name of the display manager, is because it depends which desktop you chose at installation.

lightdm is probably the most likely, but might not be right

sudo service [program] start/stop/restart is now the prefered way to address anything in the /etc/init.d/ folder
I must admit I generally address directly just out of habit

regards

Once I get there, I can let you know if there's any more errors. I can tell you this, though - at least this time when I installed, the updates and package manager are actually working and erroring out, so I have more confidence that I had a dodgy installation the last few days and that this one is working.

The package xinput-calibrator is in sid, you would need to add that stanza to your /etc/apt/sources.list
The problem might be that it requires too high a version number of libc6

The actual errors will tell you what is wrong, albeit sometimes obtusely and only for the first error it hit

ArcEye wrote:

The reason why I didn't put the name of the display manager, is because it depends which desktop you chose at installation.

I'll take your word for it. Having just reinstalled again last night, I can say with certainty that there was nothing that offered up a choice though. Three clicks for English, America, and Central Time, name the machine, create my account, choose the eth0, and off we went.

ArcEye wrote:

sudo service [program] start/stop/restart is now the prefered way to address anything in the /etc/init.d/ folder
I must admit I generally address directly just out of habit

Good to know. Thank you. I'll have to write that down... Thank you for the help.

ArcEye wrote:

The package xinput-calibrator is in sid, you would need to add that stanza to your /etc/apt/sources.list
The problem might be that it requires too high a version number of libc6
The actual errors will tell you what is wrong, albeit sometimes obtusely and only for the first error it hit

That's the kind of stuff that we need to know. I'll Google later and try to figure out how to add that in. Been way too long for me to even attempt to recall.

For now, it seems my attempts at adding the udev rules did not succeed, so I'll need to try and figure out why it's not starting inputattach first.

Thank you.

That's the kind of stuff that we need to know. I'll Google later and try to figure out how to add that in. Been way too long for me to even attempt to recall.

Same as your other lines except replace wheezy main contrib non-free with sid main contrib non-free

If several packages exist but you want a particular one you can specify the archive with

apt-get install -t sid [name-of-package]

Generally safest to keep the repo stanzas you don't normally use commented out, then enable them and and run apt-get update before using, then comment out and run apt-get update again.

That way you don't run the risk of running apt-get dist-upgrade and finding you have upgraded to Jessie