After updating my Xorg from the Xorg repo I experienced all the problems that others have reported previously. Most of my problems got fixed a few days later when the gods of packaging channeled some new packages into the repo. A few problems remain, and it is one of these I will attempt to provide a workaround for. My tablet is a Toshiba portege M700, but I assume that this also helps those with other tablets.
My tablet does not work properly any more: After installing the updated Xorg packages I found that although touch input worked, my pen did not. As soon as the pen got close to screen, the cursor would disappear. Using the mouse I would find that the cursor had gone somewhere off-screen. I tried rerunning sax to get it working again but it did not help at all. Running Xsetwacom -x get Mousename bottomy(x), I found that one of my inputs reported topy(x) and bottomy(x) of 0 (zero). I jotted down the topx(y) and bottomx(y) coordinates from the input that reported correctly and modified my xorg.conf to look like this. NOTE: I’m not sure if you need to comment away Protocol, but it seemed like a good idea.
Section “InputDevice”
Driver “wacom”
Identifier “Mouse[9]”
Option “Button2” “3”
Option “Device” “/dev/ttyS0”
Option “BaudRate” “38400”
Option “ForceDevice” “ISDV4”
Option “InputFashion” “Pen”
Option “Mode” “Absolute”
Option “Name” “ISDV4 TABLET PC Stylus (SERIAL)”
Option “TopX” “0”
Option “TopY” “0”
Option “BottomX” “26112”
Option “BottomY” “16320”
Option “Protocol” “Auto”
#Option “Protocol” “Auto”
Option “Type” “stylus”
Option “Vendor” “TABLET PCs”
EndSection
Section “InputDevice”
Driver “wacom”
Identifier “Mouse[11]”
Option “Device” “/dev/ttyS0”
Option “BaudRate” “38400”
Option “ForceDevice” “ISDV4”
Option “InputFashion” “Eraser”
Option “Mode” “Absolute”
Option “Name” “ISDV4 TABLET PC Eraser (SERIAL)”
Option “TopX” “0”
Option “TopY” “0”
Option “BottomX” “26112”
Option “BottomY” “16320”
Option “Protocol” “Auto”
Option “Type” “eraser”
Option “Vendor” “TABLET PCs”
EndSection
Section “InputDevice”
Driver “wacom”
Identifier “Mouse[13]”
Option “Device” “/dev/ttyS0”
Option “BaudRate” “38400”
Option “ForceDevice” “ISDV4”
Option “InputFashion” “Touch”
Option “Mode” “Absolute”
Option “Name” “ISDV4 TABLET PC Touch (SERIAL)”
Option “TopX” “0”
Option “TopY” “0”
Option “BottomX” “4096”
Option “BottomY” “4096”
Option “Protocol” “Auto”
Option “Type” “touch”
Option “Vendor” “TABLET PCs”
EndSection
Once that was in Xorg.conf a quick restart of X fixed my tablet input. My touch input worked correctly so I’m not altogether sure that it is necessary to add toppy(x) and bottomy(x) to that device, but I did it none the less and everything works a OK.