Hi, I’m new to OpenSUSE and I’m loving it. My laptop, which was dead, killed by a virus, has come back to life. But I have the new Wacom Bamboo tablet, Id 056a : 00d4.
It seems to be too new to have a driver in suse. All of my other kit just worked, scanner, mp3 player, horrible usb modems with built in CD drives that need switching, all no problem!! 
I know it is possible to get a Wacom Bamboo working with lots of compiling and editing of arcane things like xorg files, but every time I try that I kill my computer and have to reinstall, I’m cackhanded with such stuff.
So I was wondering how soon a driver might appear.
Will it be part of an update to download?
Anybody any idea?
I miss my Bamboo, it really is fun.
Perform a search for wacom, you might find what you need.
OOps: noticed you’re new here, a very warm welcome
Yep the Wacom Project definitely supports the Bamboo, but I would have to compile stuff and edit my xorg.conf.
Last time I did that my computer died, and the time before.
I’m the opposite of a power user, so I was hoping for something like sax2, where there is a picture of a graphics tablet and a button to click.
Am I going to be waiting for the next version of openSUSE?
Does anyone know of a linux distro that supports my product ID version of the Bamboo?
Same for me, I also try to connect the Bamboo (CTL-460) to my OpenSuse 11.2 - no success. I plug in the tablet while “udevadm monitor” is running: it detects the device but no events or inputs are assigned.
I’m puzzled because the wacom.ko driver says it’s a “graphire and intuos tablet driver” - is this just a text or is the bamboo no supported ?
I’ve been trying to make the tablet work by modifying the 60-wacom.rules file - but I had no success at all.
I tried to get some informations from the “wacom project” - but I’m even more confused because many things are so much different with openSuse 11.2.
Here’s a question, if anyone could answer this: when I execute “modinfo wacom”, I got a list of “alias”-devices, they show Wacom’s manufacturer ID and a device ID - but my Bamboo 00D4 is not there. Where does this list come from ? is this hard coded in the wacom.ko module ?
thanks for any help
After searching a bit I found an article on distro watch where a designer talked about distros where he had got a bamboo 00d4 working, and even a couple of distros that support it out of the box.
Mandravia, too big and slow for my machine, supports it out of the box.
ArchLinux, too frightning, installs to a blank screen and a prompt, supports it out of the box.
VectorLinux, now your talking, supports it out of the box.
Apparently it can also be made to work with Ubuntu, but heroic efforts are required.
I’m currently trying to make a bootUSB of VectorLinux to see if what this guy said was true.
Other than these few distros all I’ve heard are tales of woe.
Hi there,
I finally made my Bamboo (CTL-460, ID=0xd4) work. Here is a short description (I’m running OpenSuse 11.2 64bit 2.6.31.12-desktop kernel)
I was searching for weeks why my Bamboo didn’t work, and no one could really explain how this system works. I think the key is the wacom.ko driver.
Using just Yast2 didn’t help me at all, I could manage to have USB see my Wacom (and here I get the information that I have a CTL-460 with ID=0xd4) but using “modinfo wacom” shows a list, where no entry matches this 0xd4 ID.
I downloaded (from the wacom project) the 0.8.4-4 and the 0.8.5-10 drivers: well, the 0.8.4-4 does not support my Bamboo (see the list of devices in the file src/xdrv/wcmUSB.c) but the 0.8.5-10 seems to ignore 2.6.31 kernel.
First, run “./configure --enable-wacom” and make sure that the final report (BUILD OPTIONS) says “wacom.o - yes”.
I’m not a kernel junkie and it took me hours to find out, that OpenSuse seems to have the kernel sources in different folders than other Linux distributions. The problem was finally, that the files “version.h” “utsrelease.h” and “autoconf.h” were somewhere in “/usr/src/linux-2.6.31.12-0.1-obj/x86_64/desktop/include/linux”, but make was looking for them in “/lib/modules/2.6.31.12-0.1-desktop/source”. I copied these files to “/usr/src/linux-2.6.31.12-0.1/include/linux” and finally configure was accepting to build wacom.o
Then start “make”, some packages were missing (xorg-server-sdk, tcl-devel and tk-devel) and run into a problem with “modpost” (make can’t find modpost). Same thing, “modpost” was only in this “/usr/src/linux-2.6.31.12-0.1-obj/…” tree, but not where make expected the kernel sources) - Fix: I copied modpost into “/usr/src/linux-2.6.31.12-0.1/scripts/mod/modpost” - and “make” finally succeeded.
At this point one word to you guys “kernel experts”: if you’re not dealing everyday with “make” and things, its really hard to find out what make really did. I mean, it looks like make worked, but what happened ? where is the output ? a short, human-readable output report would be so nice to have…
I finally found that some binaries were made in “src/2.6.27” - remember, the 0.8.5-10 has no support for 2.6.31 (nice…). So I replaced my wacom.ko file (/lib/modules/2.6.31.12-0.1-desktop/kernel/drivers/input/tablet/wacom.ko) with the new file and restarted my machine. Here’s one more thing: keep in mind that older systems call the driver “wacom.o” and the newer “wacom.ko”.
Now everything looks better. (I have to do “modprobe wacom” manually) but “modinfo wacom” shows a device with ID=0xd4, if you check /dev/input, there is “wacom” and “wacom-touch”.
So I tried to start wacdump: did not work at all. I found out, that wacdump does work if you log into a text based shell (strg+alt+F1) - but still no tablet activity with X.
After reading even more articles I had the idea, that somehow “wacom_drv.so” is also to be replaced. I tried manually, but my X11 instantly crashed. So I went again into the src folder of the wacom driver (where I started “./configure” and “make”) and ran “make install” and this seemed to be the key to make it work.
Currently, the wacom operates like a mouse when X is up, and works quite nice with Gimp, sensitive to pressure. Of course you have to tell Gimp to use the wacom bamboo (looks like everybody knew this was necessary, ok, I did not)
Listen up: here is one interesting issue: everybody is talking about modifying the “xorg.conf” and/or “10-local.rules”. Well, my system does not even have a “xorg.conf” and also no “10-local.rules”. I created both files according to the FAQ from the wacom project, but it works also without them. I have no clue why it works, but it would be great if someone could explain this architecture. I read somewhere, that the ‘new’ X is configured by HAL (ok, and what is HAL?).
The only problem currently is, that the wacom is not activated automatically, I always have to “modprobe wacom” but then it works at a glance.
I think I need something in “/etc/modprobe.d” but I have no idea how this part of the system works. I case anyone could help me in this, I would appreciate it, thank you in advance.
matthias
One more thing: is there any good article (maybe with nice colored drawings) that explains the system architecture of the current Suse 11.2 to stupid enthusiasts like me ?
matthias
Wow, Marvin, that’s truly what I’d call a heroic effort! I’m having exactly the same issues with my own Wacom Bamboo Pen & Touch on 11.2 x86_64, so I’d just like to say thanks for working that out and posting it.
Just the idea of having to do this twice (once now and again when 11.3 comes out) makes me cringe 
Still, I’ll give this a try and hope this gets cleaned up in the not too distant future.
I’ve been trying your instructions and just getting nowhere. There must be a better way than to compile everything, SAX2 i hear work, but it calls bamboos, something else, anyone know how to work that correctly?