How a kernel update broke my stylus... Need help!
Blog post: https://www.davidrevoy.com/article995/how-a-kernel-update-broke-my-stylus-need-help

#linux #tablet #driver #krita #MastoArt #xppen #digimend #kernel

@davidrevoy nooooooooo that's awful 😭 Hope you can figure it out!

@davidrevoy one small detail cuz i own a surface pen: the eraser is actually an eraser on the back, albeit without pressure sensitivity. it is also a button (has 2 different actuation modes), and there's only one side button on surface pen.

@davidrevoy i was gonna ask if you could git-bisect to see exactly what code changed this, but it seems like you dug deep enough to figure out whats going on. so are you looking for a workaround, a code patch to revert to the old behaviour, or do you just want this fixed upstream?

@davidrevoy I assume you already told the linux devs?

@davidrevoy oh nooooo! (Un) fortunately I'm still on Mint's kernel series, but I hope someone will fix this...

@davidrevoy Did you include the cartoon with your bug report? If yes I bet it gets fixed sooner.

@davidrevoy Is there an option to just stick with LTS kernels on Fedora? I usually stick with LTS kernels because of situations like this 🤔 But it's good that you're reporting this issue.

@davidrevoy oh damn, that's bad! Why on earth wouldn't they just send another button event that any user space app could use?

@davidrevoy Since the kernel has a long standing policy not to break userspace, I expect that they will fix this — for example by accepting that the original commit had a conceptual problem that wasn’t detected due to the bug.

They write "These changes are tested in the following hid-tools regression tests:
https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/libevdev/hid-tools/-/merge_requests/127 " and I would hope that without the other bug this would have detected that the stylus button gets rendered useless that way.

But first of all: Good luck!

@davidrevoy A similar "improvement" broke scrolling on my MX Master mouse. Luckily that was handled in libinput and they later added a special config you can set to disable "HID scrolling" again

@davidrevoy This is just beautiful 😀

Never had such a beautiful illustration of Linux breaking stuff.

@davidrevoy 👆 Who would be best to talk about this, @cas ?

@jaco
Yeah I came here just to say how much I like the illustration.
@davidrevoy

@davidrevoy I believe most of this stylus support was written by @jose_exposito. Maybe he can help fix this?

Also, my reading of https://gitlab.com/cki-project/kernel-ark/-/commits/fedora-6.5/drivers/hid/hid-input.c makes me think that it was busted by this commit?

https://gitlab.com/cki-project/kernel-ark/-/commit/6360b396e81b5295aa9ee3d4f9af13b9bbbbac65

Please file a bug report in the Red Hat Bugzilla against the kernel package. https://bugzilla.redhat.com/enter_bug.cgi?product=Fedora&version=38&component=kernel

@davidrevoy Ask the linux devs. @torvalds is on here at least. As well as @linux and @vegard

You should probably file a bug report on github though.

@davidrevoy @torvalds @linux @vegard

Or find the maintainer of the driver and report to them

@efi No, I can't. They removed the issues on https://github.com/torvalds/linux and I couldn't understand where to locate a replacement in this https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/admin-guide/reporting-issues.html , I need help even to report the issue.

@davidrevoy @efi One of the kernel maintainers, @gregkh on fedi.

@davidrevoy this is something open source projects sadly do too often. Just recently, Blender changed how point lights were interpeted lately, without any discussion on older files or implications for non-photorealistic rendering (that's been fun back and forth with the devs and I)

I suggest letting the kernel devs know, I'd imagine they'd take this pretty seriously (since rule number 1 of Linux kernel development is "don't break the userspace")

@davidrevoy looking at the Git history, this might be the culprit: https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/276e14e6c3993317257e1787e93b7166fbc30905

@standingpad Thank you, that's also where my conclusion (the link in the last paragraph) is redirected.

Unfortunately, letting the kernel dev knowing about this is really hard (no 'issues' on Github, and the doc for reporting is .... well https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/admin-guide/reporting-issues.html ). Doing a blog post was my best option.

@davidrevoy @standingpad So normally you would report this to your distribution (Fedora) since this is a distro kernel -- upstream maintainers don't really know what patches are in your fedora kernel and can't take responsibility for it.

That said, it looks like the linked commit is a fix that probably isn't in your newer kernel, so there's some hope an even newer Fedora kernel will "magically" have the fix in a little while.

@davidrevoy @standingpad If you're up for building your own kernel you could try taking the fedora config (probably one of your /boot/config* files), copy it to .config in the kernel source tree and run "make binrpm-pkg" to build it.

@davidrevoy @standingpad Use email, that's how the kernel is developed and how bugs are reported, send it to the author of that commit and the mailing list listed in the MAINTAINERS file for the subsystem.

No need to file some ticket in some random web form with some odd account, email. It's simple, and easy (note, turn off HTML mode for it please.)

Good luck!

@gregkh Thank you about the formating tip (in plain text mode) I'll do my best!

@standingpad

@Hobs @davidrevoy @torvalds @vegard i'd sooner post to lkml since github seems to be secondary for their devs to check

@Hobs @davidrevoy @torvalds @vegard ah @efi got to it before me, yeah linux-usb@

@davidrevoy I do recommend you to open up an #issue with the #LKML if this issue is also reproducible on other distros with the same or newer #kernel.

Your post does show that you did your due diligence and found the culprit that caused that problem...

https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/admin-guide/reporting-issues.html

@kkarhan Hi, thanks. It was done by developers and poeple expert in this area. They relayed my email to the mailing-list. I can't do more because I own only a single email adress at @protonmail , but it is not an email provider admited by the kernel mailing list (src: the doc of the kernel) as protonmail can't do plain text with proper line breaks and the encryption makes friction on the mailing-list. Something I wish I knew when I moved to Proton 5 years ago... So, I can't interact.

@davidrevoy so let me get this straight: @protonmail fucks with customers' eMails?
That's a huge no-go IMHO because that's just inexcuseable!

Not that I'd consider #ProtonMail at all but it's just a big red flag to me even if I were to use them, because if a provider is #paywalling #IMAP & #SMTP they should be better than any generic "#Freemailer" that doesn't.
Because that makes it useless for a lot of my tech stack: What's the point of an eMail provider if I can't use it with a #Zulip server?

@kkarhan @protonmail Yes, source: https://docs.kernel.org/process/email-clients.html , the last item on bottom of the page.

"Unless a way to disable this "feature" is introduced, Proton Mail is unsuited to kernel development."

@davidrevoy Seriously, WTF @protonmail ?

#YouHadOneJob as #eMail #Provider and that is to get shit reliably sent and recieved.

If that's too hard then how should anyone trust them re: #security and #privacy?
Spoiler: Noine should!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCx_G_R0UmQ

@davidrevoy @kkarhan This is really an issue with WKD not having a mechanism by which the key server can indicate whether they want encrypted email by default or not. However, we can block kernel.org specifically to fix this, if they reach out to us.

@davidrevoy @protonmail
The longer I look at them, the more it reminds me of #CryptoAG...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_AG

It has the same "stench" and "notoriety" to the point that I'd call the same 3-letter-agencies "criminally incompetent" if they didn't already place multiple people inside if not set it up as replacement for #MINERVA...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeXaYR4ed9c

@kkarhan @davidrevoy There is no comparison between Crypto AG and us. Our encryption occurs client-side, our cryptographic code is open source ( https://proton.me/community/open-source ), and our tech can and has been independently verified. More here: https://proton.me/blog/is-protonmail-trustworthy

@protonmail @davidrevoy @kkarhan Tagging @monsieuricon because I think he would be the one to reach out to @protonmail on this matter.

@protonmail @davidrevoy @kkarhan Having a WKD doesn't imply we want to receive PGP encrypted mail -- its primary purpose is to make it easy to retrieve keys for signature verification on git commits and packaged releases. If you can turn this off for kernel.org addresses, then please do so.

@davidrevoy I'm sorry you didn't have a great experience -- fwiw, I'm working on making it easy to report bugs via bugzilla.kernel.org and actually have that be effective.

@monsieuricon thank you, and no problem. I understand a mailing list system to report require disciplin, spec and formating for all these team to collaborate. I less understood why Protonmail couldn't provide this tool. I thought they were more FOSS friendly...

Thank you for the link, and the tracker! I'll have a look.

@davidrevoy Since you're a Fedora user, the most proper way to do this is to report a bug to the Fedora bug tracker. The Fedora kernel maintainers will then work with the upstream kernel to get this solved. This way you don't need to worry about Protonmail problems *and* you will follow the correct procedure.

@fell @davidrevoy @monsieuricon also WHY should this be a problem for @linux / kernel.org to fix, @protonmail?

It's YOUR #Mailserver and YOUR Service not theirs.

Just don't fuck with customers' eMails FFS!
https://social.kernel.org/objects/b72e194b-401b-45ff-80e9-efebcb7f0ebd

To me this is entirely undesireable behaviour for any eMail-Provider but then again so is the entire proposition of not using real #E2EE and instead letting some 3rd party appliance/service handle it - regardless if #SEPsesam or @Tutanota or #ProtonMail or whatever.

@monsieuricon Right 👍 Thank you for the guidance. Very appreciated,, I'll do.

@davidrevoy @monsieuricon And also say hi to @mairin who has deep knowledge of Fedora, graphic tablets and who to talk to when problems arise ;)

@jwildeboer @davidrevoy @monsieuricon mairin@mastodon.ie :-)

@Conan_Kudo @davidrevoy indeed, I added support for a bunch of XP-Pen tablets, but none of them was an Artist.

I believe the commit you mentioned is causing the issue. Since you already submitted it upstream, the author will probably look into it and fix it.

If you are willing to test a with me a kernel driver I can add support for your tablet on the UCLogic driver and get it to work with no/minimum configuration. Feel free to ping me and I'll help you.

@monsieuricon @davidrevoy +9001%
To me @protonmail messing with customers' eMails in any shape or form is an absolute no-go!

Espechally given that they literally #paywall #SMTP & #IMAP "to protect from #Spanning".

The only legitimate reason they should ever do anything like it is if they - as bona-fide provider - get actually forced by a swiss judge to do so.

Otherwise it's only harmful to users of actual #E2EE like PGP/MIME.

It basically makes it impossible to use!
https://mstdn.social/@kkarhan/111340106144713211

@kkarhan @fell @davidrevoy @monsieuricon We did not intend to say that think we say it’s their problem, it’s simply an unfortunate ambiguity in the WKD spec that doesn’t specify how the domain wants the keys to be used.

@monsieuricon @davidrevoy @kkarhan Thank you for contacting us, we can confirm that we are now implementing a change.

@protonmail @monsieuricon @davidrevoy It should just not be a necessity to get in contact with you on the first place ffs!!!

DO NOT FIDDLE WITH CUSTOMER EMAILS !

@jose_exposito Hey Jose, thank you for your work on the built-in drivers I'm familiar with your work thanks to the news on Phoronix ( https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-5.20-XP-PEN-Deco-L or https://www.phoronix.com/news/XP-PEN-Deco-01-V2-Linux-6.2 ) that I read carefully, especially when it is about tablets 🙂

Sure, I can collaborate and give you as many feedback as necessary and tests. Thank you! You know my email now (you are in CC on mail thread "Requesting your attention and expertise regarding a Tablet/Kernel issue")

@Conan_Kudo

@davidrevoy @Conan_Kudo It looks like Benjamin is going to handle it. Which is great, because I can only work on this during the weekend and he'll be able to provide a fix way faster :)