Installing a Touchscreen Driver

Forum: X and Fluxbox
Topic: Installing a Touchscreen Driver
started by: Gregus

Posted by Gregus on Jan. 12 2005,20:24

I am running DSL on a Single Board Computer with a 10.4" LCD touchscreen. I'm trying to install the touchscreen drivers that came with the controller but I'm having trouble with them. It's supposed to be recognized as a mouse through /dev/ttyS0

Basically these are the instructions:
1) Copy FidFont to /etc
2) Copy "xf86Fidt.so" to /usr/X11R6/lib/modules
3) Modify XF86Config with the following:
1) Add "ModulePath" to the Files section:
Section "Files"
ModulePath "/usr/X11R6/lib/modules"
EndSection
2) Add to the "Module" Section
Section "Module"
Load "xf86Fidt.so"
EndSection
3) Add to the "XInput" Section
Section "XInput"
SubSection "FidTouchPanel"
DeviceName "fidtouch"
Port "/dev/ttyS0"
interfacetype "serial"
....
other config options
...
EndSubSection
EndSection

Now the directory "/usr/X11R6/lib/modules" didn't exist so I had to make it and put the xf86Fidt.so file in there. Should this be located somewhere else? Where are the other input device modules loaded from?

Installed this on my PC under Redhat 9 and it worked fine..

Any help is much appreciated!
Greg

Posted by cbagger01 on Jan. 13 2005,03:52

The default X Windows server for DSL does not use the Xfree86 program.

Instead, it is called the KDrive or "TinyX" Xserver.

If you are going to add a custom XFree86 driver for your touchscreen, then you will need to download and install the XFree86.dsl extension from the myDSL repository.

Make sure that you read the *.info file for this extension, since it is not a "One-Click" easy install.

Posted by Gregus on Jan. 13 2005,13:33

OK here's the scenario:

I have a 128 MB CompactFlash drive with DSL 0.8.1 on it. I have it setup now so that it boots to fluxbox and then runs a Java GUI on it which is why I need the touchscreen.

How do I go about installing this extension so I permanently have XFree86? The info files tells me to add those 2 files but i'm kinda sketchy on how to integrate the XFree86.dsl file.

I was really hoping this touchscreen business would just detect as a mouse.. *sigh*.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Greg

Posted by Gregus on Jan. 13 2005,15:10

Success!

Thanks to "hoed" on #damnsmalllinux irc channel who walked me through it.

Basically I had to put the XFree86.dsl extension into the root of my CF drive which is automatically detected on boot. Then I had to change the /home/dsl/.xserverrc file to: exec /usr/X11R6/bin.XFree86 -nolisten tcp and finally create the XF86Config file (using one of the examples on henk1955's site). Then I followed the instructions that came with the touchscreen driver, added the appropriate section to the XF86Config file and it worked first time.

Thanks to all who helped out!
Greg