Drawing tablet pen suddenly inactive today stopped working

Ugee M708

Slackware 14.2 : Gimp 2.8.18

Solution

Ok, this is what worked. In a run dialog or terminal disable each id after closing gimp.

Prompt# xinput disable $IDa

Where IDa and IDb are the tablet IDs, which can be read after running xinput without any arguments.

If that doesn't fix it, then enable it.

Prompt# xinput enable $IDa

Prompt# xinput disable $IDb

You'll know if you have the right one disabled if your pen can move the mouse cursor.

Once you have the correct one disabled. Run gimp, then re-enable the device you disabled.

One problem: Looks like the buttons are disabled on the graphics tablet. Meh, at least I can draw now.

End Solution

Worked wonderful in gimp the past few days, then suddenly today it's not drawing.

Xournalpp, inkscape are just fine...So I'm suspecting this is a gimp only issue.

READ THIS FIRST to ensure this is your problem.

In device status window; "10 Inch PenTablet" tool never changes with pen. Mouse's Gimp Tool changes with pen when mouse is enabled. Core pointer's Tool changes with pen when mouse is disabled.

END READ

Mostly creating this topic as it looks like this is going to be a pain in the "Hello, my darling" to figure out. (Translation: Google searches are returning bupkiss). So maybe...Maybe I'll get it figured out and there will be at least one topic that can be easily searched for this.

Note: If you have any ideas that I haven't tried in a search I haven't come across as of yet...I'm all ears, heh.

Update:

https://www.reddit.com/r/GIMP/comments/dekeyv/will_pay_for_help_lenovo_active_pen_2/ Sounds like my issue...Doesn't seem to get resolved either...Yay! I'll reboot and see if reloading the drivers might do something (or perhaps gimp is doing something screwy on reloading).

Here goes nothing.

Update 2:

Nope. Rebooting didn't work.

Update 3

Can not disable the Core Pointer to try and force the pen tool...So...I'm wondering if since Gimp doesn't show both devices in the Input Devices dialog, if it may have selected the Shading/Pressure (or whatever the other device is) on these subsequent loadings of Gimp instead of the drawing/stylus tool.

Update 4

Thought about upgrading Gimp, but that looks like it'll be a pain as I'd have to upgrade a bunch of things...if not my whole system...Yeesh!

Update 5

Just tried the option to stop and start gimp with the pen (after closing my tiling window manager and opening in xfce). This time the Core Pointer's tool changes, but still the pen tool does not in the device status window.

Update 6

If someone wants to go through the hell of doing so, dive into the digimend/gimp drivers and see if renaming duplicate named IDs might stop that behavior.