Setting up a Wacom tablet with the help of Sax2 does not always work out so well. Some manual work might be necessary.

Tablet Specs

Wacom [1] Intuos^TM^ Graphire Tablet
Model: GD-0405-R, Serial

First Steps With Sax2

You can do two things here: set up everything manually, or start out with Sax, in the hope it’ll work. I went the Sax route for two reasons: a) I hoped it might work, b) if it doesn’t at least some of the data would be already added to the XF86config file.

Setting up my tablet via Sax did not work out. The wacom driver was not loaded, and the tablet didn’t work. Some manual entries were needed. You need to do the following as root.

Open your favorite editor, and load the file “/etc/X11/XF86config”.
Now add the following items.

In Section “Module”:

Load         "wacom"

in Section “ServerLayout”:

  InputDevice  "Mouse3" "AlwaysCore"
  InputDevice  "Mouse5" "AlwaysCore"
  InputDevice  "Mouse7" "AlwaysCore"

Add the following three sections:

Section "InputDevice"
  Driver       "wacom"
  Identifier   "Mouse3"
  Option       "AlwaysCore" "on"
  Option       "Device" "/dev/ttyS0"
  Option       "InputFashion" "Tablet"
  Option       "Mode" "Relative"
  Option       "Name" "GRAPHIRE / INTUOS (SERIAL)"
  Option       "SendCoreEvents" "on"
  Option       "Type" "cursor"
  Option       "Vendor" "WACOM"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
  Driver       "wacom"
  Identifier   "Mouse5"
  Option       "AlwaysCore" "on"
  Option       "Device" "/dev/ttyS0"
  Option       "InputFashion" "Pen"
  Option       "Mode" "Relative"
  Option       "Name" "GRAPHIRE / INTUOS Stylus (SERIAL)"
  Option       "Protocol" "Auto"
  Option       "Type" "stylus"
  Option       "Vendor" "WACOM"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
  Driver       "wacom"
  Identifier   "Mouse7"
  Option       "AlwaysCore" "on"
  Option       "Device" "/dev/ttyS0"
  Option       "InputFashion" "Eraser"
  Option       "Mode" "Relative"
  Option       "Name" "GRAPHIRE / INTUOS Eraser (SERIAL)"
  Option       "Protocol" "Auto"
  Option       "Type" "eraser"
  Option       "Vendor" "WACOM"
EndSection

Save your file and restart the X-Server via CTRL + ALT + Back (it will kick you back to the login screen).

The Module ‘wacom’

If your Wacom tablet works after you logged in again you’re all set. If not, check if the wacom module was loaded with “lsmod”. See if you can find a module named ‘wacom’ in the list. If not, check if you can load it manually. You need to be root to do so. Run ‘ modprobe wacom’. Now restart the X-server again, log back in and see if your tablet works. In theory it should work now.

Now add the following line to your boot.local file (You’ll find it in ‘/etc/init.d’):

modprobe wacom

Restart your machine and see if it works.

Some Notes

Make sure you have ‘linuxwacom’ installed; you can do so via Yast.

The above method worked on my machine. It may or may not work on yours.

My tablet is rather old, it’s the first version of the Intuos series and it uses a serial port, not a USB one. Setting up a USB tablet will require some modifications, which can be found under the resources [2] and [3]. If you google you will find more links of course.

When you set up your tablet via Yast, it might set the mode value to ‘Absolute’. On my system, this had the effect that the tablet area covered only half of the screen. Setting it to ‘Relative’ fixed this annoyance.

Resources

[1] Wacom Technology
[2] Wacom(4x) Manual Page
[3] The Linux Wacom Project