For the record, in case anyone else runs into this, following the Gentoo Upgrade Guild, I chose course (2) to deal with HAL, ie I compiled 'USE="-hal" emerge xorg-server'.
I encountered 3 problems. (1) xf86-video-intel-2.6.3-r1 failed to compile with a message implying lack of a file 'xf86dri.h' : since I'm using an Nvidia card, not the Intel chip on the mobo, that seems not to be relevant for my needs. (2) after rebooting & entering 'startx', I got a 'no screen' error, which was solved by commenting out the line incl "RgbPath" in xorg.conf . (3) when X finally started, my mouse didn't work: oh no ! -- first, I followed the 3rd course from the Upgrade Guide & add 'Option "AutoAddDevices" "false"' to xorg.conf (it shouldn't be needed if you follow course (2) above); that didn't change anything, so I looked at my handwritten list of the pkgs I had installed, which I had numbered as usual, & noticed that 'xf86-input-mouse' was compiled before 'xorg-server': had the former failed to notice '-hal' used with the latter ? -- so I recompiled the mouse module & now everything is working as it should. Yet again, I was helped by NOT doing a blanket 'emerge world', but compiling (groups of) pkgs individually & making a note of what I did. Also, I could see what was going wrong & fix it much more easily, as I don't boot straight into X , but to a raw console first. Finally, it helps (if you use KDE) to enable keypad cursor movements, tho' I didn't find out how to emulate a mouse click that way. HTH & comments welcome. -- ========================,,============================================ SUPPORT ___________//___, Philip Webb ELECTRIC /] [] [] [] [] []| Cities Centre, University of Toronto TRANSIT `-O----------O---' purslowatchassdotutorontodotca
