Re: ..solved: two video cards on Squeeze

[Bob Proulx]

Rob Owens wrote:
> Bob Proulx wrote:
> > if xrandr --query | grep -q HDMI2; then
> >   xrandr --auto --output HDMI2 --right-of HDMI1
> > fi
>
> Bob, have you tried this with two separate video cards?

Nope.  Mine are all on two output video cards.  Oh well.

Bob


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Re: ..solved: two video cards on Squeeze

[Arnt Karlsen]

On Fri, 27 Apr 2012 21:01:44 -0400, Rob wrote in message 
<20120428010144.ga4...@aurora.owens.net>:

> On Wed, Apr 25, 2012 at 03:25:28PM +0200, Arnt Karlsen wrote:
> > > Actually, I now need to figure out how to make the two screens
> > > act as one.  Currently, I can open applications on either screen
> > > but I can't, for instance, drag an application from one screen to
> > > the other.  I'm not sure if I can do that with separate video
> > > cards, though.
> > > 
> > > -Rob
> > 
> > ..well, play with the GUI menus, e.g. KDE's "System Settings" -> 
> > "Display and Monitor" -> "Multiple Monitors" or Gnome's (AFAIR)
> > "System" -> "Preferences" -> "Display and Monitor" etc as you 
> > fool around with the plug-'n-play things 'n see what happens. ;o)
> > 
> I've tried gnome-display-properties as well as lxrandr.  Both only
> detect one monitor.  But it depends on which of my monitors I launch
> the application from.  In other words, they only detect the monitor
> on which the application is running.
> 
> So I guess I have something fundamentally wrong in my xorg.conf, or
> this is just not possible with separate video cards.

..ok, you have one screen on your mainboard display er, plug and
one in one of your 2 graphic card plugs.  Tried the other one of
the 2?
 
> Something even more interesting:  I set up fluxbox to show workspaces
> 1-4 on my primary monitor, and workspaces 5-6 on my secondary monitor.
> Fluxbox lets me "send" a window to a different workspace, but I can't
> send from workspace 1 to workspace 5 or 6.  I can only send to a
> different workspace on the same monitor.

..ok, now, _that_ might warrant its own thread.

-- 
..med vennlig hilsen = with Kind Regards from Arnt Karlsen
...with a number of polar bear hunters in his ancestry...
  Scenarios always come in sets of three: 
  best case, worst case, and just in case.


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Re: ..solved: two video cards on Squeeze

[Rob Owens]

On Thu, Apr 26, 2012 at 02:33:54PM -0600, Bob Proulx wrote:
> Rob Owens wrote:
> > Actually, I now need to figure out how to make the two screens act as
> > one.  Currently, I can open applications on either screen but I can't,
> > for instance, drag an application from one screen to the other.  I'm not
> > sure if I can do that with separate video cards, though.
> 
> In Squeeze the support for dual monitors changed.  It is no longer in
> the configuration file, although it can be optionally placed there.
> Now multiple monitor a userland operation using the xrandr interface.
> This is nice actually and allows useful scripted configurations.  Use
> the 'xrandr --query' to print attached device information and then use
> the device information to specify where the monitors are placed in the
> larger logical screen.
> 
> I have the following in my init files.  I will avoid mentioning the
> file I am using because I doubt you are launching the same way and it
> would just cause confusion.  But this is how I turn on dual monitor
> support these days.
> 
> if xrandr --query | grep -q HDMI2; then
>   xrandr --auto --output HDMI2 --right-of HDMI1
> fi
> 
Bob, have you tried this with two separate video cards?  I tried this
(with no xorg.conf) and it only sees my onboard video card when I run
xrandr --query.

If I create xorg.conf and get both monitors working, xrandr --query only
sees the monitor that I'm currently using (the monitor that the xterm is
displayed on, in which I'm running the xrandr command).

Thanks for the help so far.

-Rob


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Re: ..solved: two video cards on Squeeze

[Rob Owens]

On Wed, Apr 25, 2012 at 03:25:28PM +0200, Arnt Karlsen wrote:
> > Actually, I now need to figure out how to make the two screens act as
> > one.  Currently, I can open applications on either screen but I can't,
> > for instance, drag an application from one screen to the other.  I'm
> > not sure if I can do that with separate video cards, though.
> > 
> > -Rob
> 
> ..well, play with the GUI menus, e.g. KDE's "System Settings" -> 
> "Display and Monitor" -> "Multiple Monitors" or Gnome's (AFAIR)
> "System" -> "Preferences" -> "Display and Monitor" etc as you 
> fool around with the plug-'n-play things 'n see what happens. ;o)
> 
I've tried gnome-display-properties as well as lxrandr.  Both only
detect one monitor.  But it depends on which of my monitors I launch the
application from.  In other words, they only detect the monitor on which
the application is running.

So I guess I have something fundamentally wrong in my xorg.conf, or this
is just not possible with separate video cards.

Something even more interesting:  I set up fluxbox to show workspaces
1-4 on my primary monitor, and workspaces 5-6 on my secondary monitor.
Fluxbox lets me "send" a window to a different workspace, but I can't
send from workspace 1 to workspace 5 or 6.  I can only send to a
different workspace on the same monitor.

-Rob


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Re: ..solved: two video cards on Squeeze

[Bob Proulx]

Rob Owens wrote:
> Actually, I now need to figure out how to make the two screens act as
> one.  Currently, I can open applications on either screen but I can't,
> for instance, drag an application from one screen to the other.  I'm not
> sure if I can do that with separate video cards, though.

In Squeeze the support for dual monitors changed.  It is no longer in
the configuration file, although it can be optionally placed there.
Now multiple monitor a userland operation using the xrandr interface.
This is nice actually and allows useful scripted configurations.  Use
the 'xrandr --query' to print attached device information and then use
the device information to specify where the monitors are placed in the
larger logical screen.

I have the following in my init files.  I will avoid mentioning the
file I am using because I doubt you are launching the same way and it
would just cause confusion.  But this is how I turn on dual monitor
support these days.

if xrandr --query | grep -q HDMI2; then
  xrandr --auto --output HDMI2 --right-of HDMI1
fi

Bob


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Re: ..solved: two video cards on Squeeze

[Arnt Karlsen]

On Tue, 24 Apr 2012 21:19:57 -0400, Rob wrote in message 
<20120425011957.gc8...@aurora.owens.net>:

> On Wed, Apr 25, 2012 at 02:40:08AM +0200, Arnt Karlsen wrote:
> > On Tue, 24 Apr 2012 18:34:18 -0400, Rob wrote in message 
> > <20120424223418.ga5...@aurora.owens.net>:
> > 
> > > On Tue, Apr 24, 2012 at 05:44:51PM -0400, Rob Owens wrote:
> > > > I need to get two monitors running on two separate video cards
> > > > on a Squeeze system.  Do I need to customize my xorg.conf, or
> > > > is there a simple gui tool to do this nowadays?
> > > > 
> > > Wow, I got it working already.  All I did was:
> > > 
> > > /etc/init.d/gdm3 stop
> > > X -configure
> > > cp /root/xorg.conf.new /etc/X11/xorg.conf
> > > /etc/init.d/gdm3 start
> > > 
> > > Actually, I did have to make a correction to xorg.conf.  The
> > > radeonhd driver did not work, so I switched it to radeon and that
> > > fixed it.  I also had to change the order of my screens (right to
> > > left), but that's to be expected.
> > > 
> > > For the record, my system has an onboard NVidia GeForce 6100 and
> > > a PCI Express ATI Radeon HD 3470.  The ATI card has dual
> > > DisplayPort outputs, but my second monitor only has VGA inputs so
> > > I opted to use the onboard VGA instead of buying an adapter.
> > 
> > ..so, all you "need" to do now, is hook up your 3'rd screen 
> > to your 2'nd DisplayPort. ;o)
> > 
> Exactly! 
> 
> Actually, I now need to figure out how to make the two screens act as
> one.  Currently, I can open applications on either screen but I can't,
> for instance, drag an application from one screen to the other.  I'm
> not sure if I can do that with separate video cards, though.
> 
> -Rob

..well, play with the GUI menus, e.g. KDE's "System Settings" -> 
"Display and Monitor" -> "Multiple Monitors" or Gnome's (AFAIR)
"System" -> "Preferences" -> "Display and Monitor" etc as you 
fool around with the plug-'n-play things 'n see what happens. ;o)

-- 
..med vennlig hilsen = with Kind Regards from Arnt Karlsen
...with a number of polar bear hunters in his ancestry...
  Scenarios always come in sets of three: 
  best case, worst case, and just in case.


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Re: ..solved: two video cards on Squeeze

[Rob Owens]

On Wed, Apr 25, 2012 at 02:40:08AM +0200, Arnt Karlsen wrote:
> On Tue, 24 Apr 2012 18:34:18 -0400, Rob wrote in message 
> <20120424223418.ga5...@aurora.owens.net>:
> 
> > On Tue, Apr 24, 2012 at 05:44:51PM -0400, Rob Owens wrote:
> > > I need to get two monitors running on two separate video cards on a
> > > Squeeze system.  Do I need to customize my xorg.conf, or is there a
> > > simple gui tool to do this nowadays?
> > > 
> > Wow, I got it working already.  All I did was:
> > 
> > /etc/init.d/gdm3 stop
> > X -configure
> > cp /root/xorg.conf.new /etc/X11/xorg.conf
> > /etc/init.d/gdm3 start
> > 
> > Actually, I did have to make a correction to xorg.conf.  The radeonhd
> > driver did not work, so I switched it to radeon and that fixed it.  I
> > also had to change the order of my screens (right to left), but that's
> > to be expected.
> > 
> > For the record, my system has an onboard NVidia GeForce 6100 and a PCI
> > Express ATI Radeon HD 3470.  The ATI card has dual DisplayPort
> > outputs, but my second monitor only has VGA inputs so I opted to use
> > the onboard VGA instead of buying an adapter.
> 
> ..so, all you "need" to do now, is hook up your 3'rd screen 
> to your 2'nd DisplayPort. ;o)
> 
Exactly! 

Actually, I now need to figure out how to make the two screens act as
one.  Currently, I can open applications on either screen but I can't,
for instance, drag an application from one screen to the other.  I'm not
sure if I can do that with separate video cards, though.

-Rob


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..solved: two video cards on Squeeze

[Arnt Karlsen]

On Tue, 24 Apr 2012 18:34:18 -0400, Rob wrote in message 
<20120424223418.ga5...@aurora.owens.net>:

> On Tue, Apr 24, 2012 at 05:44:51PM -0400, Rob Owens wrote:
> > I need to get two monitors running on two separate video cards on a
> > Squeeze system.  Do I need to customize my xorg.conf, or is there a
> > simple gui tool to do this nowadays?
> > 
> Wow, I got it working already.  All I did was:
> 
> /etc/init.d/gdm3 stop
> X -configure
> cp /root/xorg.conf.new /etc/X11/xorg.conf
> /etc/init.d/gdm3 start
> 
> Actually, I did have to make a correction to xorg.conf.  The radeonhd
> driver did not work, so I switched it to radeon and that fixed it.  I
> also had to change the order of my screens (right to left), but that's
> to be expected.
> 
> For the record, my system has an onboard NVidia GeForce 6100 and a PCI
> Express ATI Radeon HD 3470.  The ATI card has dual DisplayPort
> outputs, but my second monitor only has VGA inputs so I opted to use
> the onboard VGA instead of buying an adapter.

..so, all you "need" to do now, is hook up your 3'rd screen 
to your 2'nd DisplayPort. ;o)

-- 
..med vennlig hilsen = with Kind Regards from Arnt Karlsen
...with a number of polar bear hunters in his ancestry...
  Scenarios always come in sets of three: 
  best case, worst case, and just in case.


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Re: two video cards on Squeeze

[Rob Owens]

On Tue, Apr 24, 2012 at 05:44:51PM -0400, Rob Owens wrote:
> I need to get two monitors running on two separate video cards on a
> Squeeze system.  Do I need to customize my xorg.conf, or is there a
> simple gui tool to do this nowadays?
> 
Wow, I got it working already.  All I did was:

/etc/init.d/gdm3 stop
X -configure
cp /root/xorg.conf.new /etc/X11/xorg.conf
/etc/init.d/gdm3 start

Actually, I did have to make a correction to xorg.conf.  The radeonhd
driver did not work, so I switched it to radeon and that fixed it.  I
also had to change the order of my screens (right to left), but that's
to be expected.

For the record, my system has an onboard NVidia GeForce 6100 and a PCI
Express ATI Radeon HD 3470.  The ATI card has dual DisplayPort outputs,
but my second monitor only has VGA inputs so I opted to use the onboard
VGA instead of buying an adapter.

-Rob


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two video cards on Squeeze

[Rob Owens]

I need to get two monitors running on two separate video cards on a
Squeeze system.  Do I need to customize my xorg.conf, or is there a
simple gui tool to do this nowadays?

Thanks

-Rob


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Re: Monitors requiring interlaced video modes with older Nvidia video cards are out of options in wheezy

[Stephen Powell]

On Mon, 25 Apr 2011 22:39:16 -0400 (EDT), Stephen Powell wrote:
> On Mon, 25 Apr 2011 14:32:43 -0400 (EDT), Sven Joachim wrote:
>> On 2011-04-24 22:19 +0200, Stephen Powell wrote:
>>> ...
>>> The same bug can be reproduced by using the following kernel boot parameter:
>>>
>>>video=VGA-1:1024x768@87i
>>> 
>>> ...
>> 
>> Please add these findings to the bug report.
> 
> I will.  But I want to do some more experimenting first.
> I rolled up my sleeves and dug in to the kernel source code today.
> One thing I discovered is that the vertical refresh rate for an interlaced
> mode needs to be specified as the full-frame rate, not the half-frame rate.
> Therefore, the corrected version of the above video boot parameter is
> 
>video=VGA-1:1024x768@43i
> 
> I tried that and got output for the first time.  But it was strange-looking
> output.  Instead of the expected 128-column by 48-row frame buffer console
> I got a 128-column by 24-row console, occupying the lower half of the screen
> only.  Weird.  But at least I got output.  I'm digging deeper and deeper into
> the source code.  Maybe I'll find something.

I found the bug!  I'm working on a patch.

-- 
  .''`. Stephen Powell
 : :'  :
 `. `'`
   `-


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Re: Monitors requiring interlaced video modes with older Nvidia video cards are out of options in wheezy

[Stephen Powell]

On Mon, 25 Apr 2011 14:32:43 -0400 (EDT), Sven Joachim wrote:
> On 2011-04-24 22:19 +0200, Stephen Powell wrote:
>> ...
>> The same bug can be reproduced by using the following kernel boot parameter:
>>
>>video=VGA-1:1024x768@87i
>> 
>> ...
> 
> Please add these findings to the bug report.

I will.  But I want to do some more experimenting first.
I rolled up my sleeves and dug in to the kernel source code today.
One thing I discovered is that the vertical refresh rate for an interlaced
mode needs to be specified as the full-frame rate, not the half-frame rate.
Therefore, the corrected version of the above video boot parameter is

   video=VGA-1:1024x768@43i

I tried that and got output for the first time.  But it was strange-looking
output.  Instead of the expected 128-column by 48-row frame buffer console
I got a 128-column by 24-row console, occupying the lower half of the screen
only.  Weird.  But at least I got output.  I'm digging deeper and deeper into
the source code.  Maybe I'll find something.

-- 
  .''`. Stephen Powell
 : :'  :
 `. `'`
   `-


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Re: Monitors requiring interlaced video modes with older Nvidia video cards are out of options in wheezy

[Sven Joachim]

On 2011-04-24 22:19 +0200, Stephen Powell wrote:

> Actually, now that I think about it, this bug report has probably been
> sitting on the wrong queue all this time.  I reported the bug against
> package xserver-xorg-video-nouveau, which is a user-space X driver.  But
> the driver uses kernel mode setting (KMS) to set the actual video mode.
> The same bug can be reproduced by using the following kernel boot parameter:
>
>video=VGA-1:1024x768@87i
>
> Except that in this case the blank screen is produced on the frame-buffer
> text consoles (vt1-vt6) instead of the X server console (vt7).  This tells
> me that the bug is on the kernel-space side rather than the user-space
> side.  If I were the maintainer, that would probably have been the first
> thing I would have tried to determine.  The bug could be in the nouveau
> kernel module, or perhaps in more-generic KMS code.  To determine if the
> problem is nouveau-specific, I would need a non-Nvidia video card whose
> driver also uses KMS.

Please add these findings to the bug report.

> But that brings up another issue, which is reporting bugs upstream.
> The official Debian policy is "Don't report bugs upstream".  I quote from
> http://www.debian.org/Bugs/Reporting:
>
>Don't file bugs upstream
>
>If you file a bug in Debian, don't send a copy to the upstream software
>maintainers yourself, as it is possible that the bug exists only in Debian.
>If necessary, the maintainer of the package will forward the bug upstream.

This opinion is certainly not universally shared among Debian
developers.  Maintainers of popular packages are usually swamped with
bug reports, and if the bug is hardware specific (like the majority of
kernel and video driver bugs are) playing proxy between the user and
upstream is a very inefficient work flow -- better ask the user to
report the bug upstream himself and answer any questions that upstream
has directly.

> But if the bug is clearly in upstream code, and the maintainer is ignoring
> the bug report, what else can one do?

Like Boyd and Ron recommended, report the bug upstream and mark it as
forwarded.  Bonus points for you if you can first try kernel 2.6.39-rc4
which has just been uploaded to experimental.

Sven


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Re: Monitors requiring interlaced video modes with older Nvidia video cards are out of options in wheezy

[Andrei Popescu]

On Du, 24 apr 11, 16:19:05, Stephen Powell wrote:
> 
> But that brings up another issue, which is reporting bugs upstream.
> The official Debian policy is "Don't report bugs upstream".  I quote from
> http://www.debian.org/Bugs/Reporting:
> 
>Don't file bugs upstream
> 
>If you file a bug in Debian, don't send a copy to the upstream software
>maintainers yourself, as it is possible that the bug exists only in Debian.
>If necessary, the maintainer of the package will forward the bug upstream.
> 
> But if the bug is clearly in upstream code, and the maintainer is ignoring
> the bug report, what else can one do?

I dare say you in particulara are not the intended audience for that 
documentation. As far as I can tell you are more than qualified to judge 
if the bug is upstream or not, just don't forget to 'forward' the Debian 
bug and tag 'upstream'.

Regards,
Andrei
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Re: Monitors requiring interlaced video modes with older Nvidia video cards are out of options in wheezy

[Boyd Stephen Smith Jr.]

On 2011-04-24 15:19:05 Stephen Powell wrote:
>   Don't file bugs upstream
>
>   If you file a bug in Debian, don't send a copy to the upstream software
>   maintainers yourself, as it is possible that the bug exists only in
>Debian. If necessary, the maintainer of the package will forward the bug
>upstream.
>
>But if the bug is clearly in upstream code, and the maintainer is ignoring
>the bug report, what else can one do?

Take action and help the maintainer out.  Most maintainers love it when 
someone else does work for them.  If you know it's an upstream bug, file it 
there and mark the bug as forwarded.
-- 
Boyd Stephen Smith Jr.   ,= ,-_-. =.
b...@iguanasuicide.net  ((_/)o o(\_))
ICQ: 514984 YM/AIM: DaTwinkDaddy `-'(. .)`-'
http://iguanasuicide.net/\_/


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Re: Monitors requiring interlaced video modes with older Nvidia video cards are out of options in wheezy

[Stephen Powell]

On Sun, 24 Apr 2011 04:34:13 -0400 (EDT), Andrei Popescu wrote:
> On Sat, 23 Apr 2011 17:57:07 -0400 (EDT), Stephen Powell wrote:
>> 
>> I can't use the nouveau driver because the nouveau driver doesn't work
>> with interlaced video modes.  I filed a bug report a good while ago.  See
>> 
>>http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=589452
>> 
>> No response.
> 
> You could try to report the bug upstream (and then tag the Debian bug 
> accordingly), since this is clearly an upstream issue.
> 
> Of course, ideally would be for you to write the support for interlaced 
> video modes, maybe with help from other people, but I'm not sure how 
> many people are interested in this.

The problem isn't that there is no support for interlaced video modes.
There IS support for interlaced video modes.  The problem is that it
DOESN'T WORK.  That's actually a good thing, because it means that the
fix is likely to be a fairly simple adjustment to existing code, rather
than writing new code to add new function.  I don't get any error messages
stating "unsupported video mode", or any such thing.  There is no indication
from looking at the logs that there is anything wrong.  I just get a black
screen.

Actually, now that I think about it, this bug report has probably been
sitting on the wrong queue all this time.  I reported the bug against
package xserver-xorg-video-nouveau, which is a user-space X driver.  But
the driver uses kernel mode setting (KMS) to set the actual video mode.
The same bug can be reproduced by using the following kernel boot parameter:

   video=VGA-1:1024x768@87i

Except that in this case the blank screen is produced on the frame-buffer
text consoles (vt1-vt6) instead of the X server console (vt7).  This tells
me that the bug is on the kernel-space side rather than the user-space
side.  If I were the maintainer, that would probably have been the first
thing I would have tried to determine.  The bug could be in the nouveau
kernel module, or perhaps in more-generic KMS code.  To determine if the
problem is nouveau-specific, I would need a non-Nvidia video card whose
driver also uses KMS.

But that brings up another issue, which is reporting bugs upstream.
The official Debian policy is "Don't report bugs upstream".  I quote from
http://www.debian.org/Bugs/Reporting:

   Don't file bugs upstream

   If you file a bug in Debian, don't send a copy to the upstream software
   maintainers yourself, as it is possible that the bug exists only in Debian.
   If necessary, the maintainer of the package will forward the bug upstream.

But if the bug is clearly in upstream code, and the maintainer is ignoring
the bug report, what else can one do?

-- 
  .''`. Stephen Powell
 : :'  :
 `. `'`
   `-


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Re: Monitors requiring interlaced video modes with older Nvidia video cards are out of options in wheezy

[Andrei Popescu]

On Sb, 23 apr 11, 17:57:07, Stephen Powell wrote:
> 
> I can't use the nouveau driver because the nouveau driver doesn't work
> with interlaced video modes.  I filed a bug report a good while ago.  See
> 
>http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=589452
> 
> No response.

You could try to report the bug upstream (and then tag the Debian bug 
accordingly), since this is clearly an upstream issue.

Of course, ideally would be for you to write the support for interlaced 
video modes, maybe with help from other people, but I'm not sure how 
many people are interested in this.

You might even face disinterest in merging in a possible patch as CRTs 
are disappearing and the code would eventually bitrot as well.

Regards,
Andrei
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Re: Monitors requiring interlaced video modes with older Nvidia video cards are out of options in wheezy

[Sven Joachim]

On 2011-04-24 00:14 +0200, Boyd Stephen Smith Jr. wrote:

> There may have been DSFG-freeness concerns about the code as well, but they 
> were not the primary motivator for removing the package from testing.  

They were.  Bug #383465¹ had been ignored for three releases already
which is really too long.

> (Obfuscated code may have driven the X.org developers away from the nv driver 
> to the Nouveau driver, though.)

This is probably not the case since nv is still the default driver
upstream, although every major Linux distribution has switched to
nouveau, even Slackware.  I don't expect this to change unless nouveau
sees a real release which, with the current attitude of the nouveau
developers, is unlikely to ever happen.

Sven


¹ http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=383465


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Re: Monitors requiring interlaced video modes with older Nvidia video cards are out of options in wheezy

[Boyd Stephen Smith Jr.]

In <4db35418.50...@cox.net>, Ron Johnson wrote:
>But OP is correct that nv *works*.  *Everywhere*.

I didn't claim otherwise.  It also doesn't change the fact that it is not 
currently maintained.  If you'd like it maintained, I suggest you chip in 
resources, possibly pooling them with other interested users.
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Re: Monitors requiring interlaced video modes with older Nvidia video cards are out of options in wheezy

[Stephen Powell]

On Sat, 23 Apr 2011 18:14:39 -0400 (EDT), Boyd Stephen Smith Jr. wrote:
> Stephen Powell wrote:
>> I really don't see why nv had to be dropped from the distribution.
> 
> It is no longer maintained.  NVidia abandoned it a while ago.  It was still 
> maintained by the X.org developers for a while.  However, the Nouveau driver 
> reaching some level of usefulness has seen the X.org developers stop 
> supporting the nv driver.

I guess that makes sense.  I only wish that X.org had waited until the nouveau
driver was more mature (such as support for interlaced video modes) before
dropping support for nv.  nv has a niche that cannot be easily filled by any
other driver, as my situation illustrates.  And the lack of response to my bug
report is also disappointing.

-- 
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 : :'  :
 `. `'`
   `-


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Re: Monitors requiring interlaced video modes with older Nvidia video cards are out of options in wheezy

[Ron Johnson]

On 04/23/2011 05:14 PM, Boyd Stephen Smith Jr. wrote:

In<1636648964.128495.1303595827920.javamail.r...@md01.wow.synacor.com>,
Stephen Powell wrote:

I really don't see why nv had to be dropped from the distribution.


It is no longer maintained.  NVidia abandoned it a while ago.  It was still
maintained by the X.org developers for a while.  However, the Nouveau driver
reaching some level of usefulness has seen the X.org developers stop
supporting the nv driver.

Debian testing exists to produce the next stable.  Debian tries to avoid
including unmaintained software in a stable release.  Unless the nv driver
gets a maintainer, which seems unlikely, it would need to be dropped from
testing before the next stable release.  It was dropped as early as possible
to identify issues and have the most time available to remedy them, either by
recommending a good migration path or providing the missing functionality.



But OP is correct that nv *works*.  *Everywhere*.

Nouveau, OTOH, *doesn't* work everywhere.

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=nouveau_2639_flip&num=4

--
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the liberty and happiness of a people whose manners are universally
corrupt."
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Re: Monitors requiring interlaced video modes with older Nvidia video cards are out of options in wheezy

[Ron Johnson]

On 04/23/2011 04:57 PM, Stephen Powell wrote:

I thought this would probably happen eventually.  And it did.

I use an Nvidia video card with a RIVA TNT2 chipset.  My CRT monitor,
an IBM G51, has a maximum pixel clock rate of 70 MHz.  In order
to get 1024x768 resolution out of this monitor I must use an
interlaced video mode.  (There is a 1024x768@60 non-interlaced mode,
but the flicker level is unacceptable.)  I run wheezy.  And I am now
officially out of supported options for the X server.

I can't use the nouveau driver because the nouveau driver doesn't work
with interlaced video modes.  I filed a bug report a good while ago.  See

http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=589452

No response.


[blah blah]


I really did try hard to make nouveau work for me, but it just doesn't.



Bit rot is a sad, sad thing.  Move to Slackware, DFS, Gentoo, go back to 
Lenny or buy a slightly less trailing edge video card.


I know you don't have PCIe on your mobo, but the $34 (zero $ shipping) 
GeForce 210 (fanless!) that I recently ponied up for to replace my 7300 
decodes everything that I've thrown at it, as opposed to having the CPU 
grind away.


Moral of the anecdote: sometimes it's good to upgrade to less trailing 
edge kit even though the old h/w still powers up.


--
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the liberty and happiness of a people whose manners are universally
corrupt."
Samuel Adams, essay in The Public Advertiser, 1749


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Re: Monitors requiring interlaced video modes with older Nvidia video cards are out of options in wheezy

[Boyd Stephen Smith Jr.]

In <1636648964.128495.1303595827920.javamail.r...@md01.wow.synacor.com>, 
Stephen Powell wrote:
>I really don't see why nv had to be dropped from the distribution.

It is no longer maintained.  NVidia abandoned it a while ago.  It was still 
maintained by the X.org developers for a while.  However, the Nouveau driver 
reaching some level of usefulness has seen the X.org developers stop 
supporting the nv driver.

Debian testing exists to produce the next stable.  Debian tries to avoid 
including unmaintained software in a stable release.  Unless the nv driver 
gets a maintainer, which seems unlikely, it would need to be dropped from 
testing before the next stable release.  It was dropped as early as possible 
to identify issues and have the most time available to remedy them, either by 
recommending a good migration path or providing the missing functionality.

There may have been DSFG-freeness concerns about the code as well, but they 
were not the primary motivator for removing the package from testing.  
(Obfuscated code may have driven the X.org developers away from the nv driver 
to the Nouveau driver, though.)
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Monitors requiring interlaced video modes with older Nvidia video cards are out of options in wheezy

[Stephen Powell]

I thought this would probably happen eventually.  And it did.

I use an Nvidia video card with a RIVA TNT2 chipset.  My CRT monitor,
an IBM G51, has a maximum pixel clock rate of 70 MHz.  In order
to get 1024x768 resolution out of this monitor I must use an
interlaced video mode.  (There is a 1024x768@60 non-interlaced mode,
but the flicker level is unacceptable.)  I run wheezy.  And I am now
officially out of supported options for the X server.

I can't use the nouveau driver because the nouveau driver doesn't work
with interlaced video modes.  I filed a bug report a good while ago.  See

   http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=589452

No response.

I can't use the proprietary nvidia driver because the
legacy-71xx driver package has not been updated to work with the version
of the X server that is used by squeeze and later releases.
And apparently, it never will be.

I can't use the nv driver because the nv driver has been dropped from
the distribution.

I can't use the vesa driver because, so far at least, I have not found
a way to make it use an interlaced mode.

The most recent "aptitude full-upgrade" forced me to remove the
previously-installed xserver-xorg-video-nv package.  My best options,
other than a hardware upgrade, are to use nouveau and drop down to
a lower resolution, such as 800x600, or put up with intolerable flicker
at 1024x768.

My solution?  I downloaded the source package for xserver-xorg-video-nv
from squeeze, compiled it under wheezy, installed it, and hoped for the
best.  Fortunately that worked.

I really don't see why nv had to be dropped from the distribution.  If
the powers that be believe the code to be in violation of the DFSG
(code obfuscation is the charge, I believe), then I don't see why it can't
be offered in non-free.

I really did try hard to make nouveau work for me, but it just doesn't.

-- 
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 : :'  :
 `. `'`
   `-


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Re: Weird WM behavior after changing video cards

[Ron Johnson]

On 03/22/2011 05:00 PM, Dr. Ed Morbius wrote:

on 19:05 Mon 21 Mar, Ron Johnson (ron.l.john...@cox.net) wrote:

Sid (up-to-date)
xfce
nvidia driver 260.19.44-1

After switching an old 7300 card for a GeForce 210 (both are
fanless), I see that the WM has changed behavior in various odd but
tolerable manners.


[snip]


The package maintainer can decide if this is something that needs to be
addressed, but at least there will be a record of the issue.  If others
have a similar (or more severe) problem, they may be able to draw a
connection between the two.

Much better than a mailing list mention.



I had an old, customised theme which seemed to be the cause.  Changed to 
a standard theme and the problem went away.



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Re: Weird WM behavior after changing video cards

[Dr. Ed Morbius]

on 19:05 Mon 21 Mar, Ron Johnson (ron.l.john...@cox.net) wrote:
> Sid (up-to-date)
> xfce
> nvidia driver 260.19.44-1
> 
> After switching an old 7300 card for a GeForce 210 (both are
> fanless), I see that the WM has changed behavior in various odd but
> tolerable manners.
> 
> These WM items are now white instead of following the theme:
> 1. Drop-down menu bg color
> 2. Button bg color
> 3. Drop-down menu "items"
> 4. Highlighted drop-down menu items (which makes them invisible)
> 
> I'm sure there are other problems that I haven't found...
> 
> This email isn't to ask for help (mainly since I don't plan on
> replacing nvidia with nouveau), but just to get it out on the web in
> case others have the same problems.

A better place for this would be the BTS (Debian bug-tracking system)
against your window manager.  Do this via 'reportbug' (from the
reportbug package).

I'd suggest setting priority to either 'normal' or 'minor' and noting
that you don't consider this to be a major issue, but one worth noting.
It's possible that this is indicating/masking other issues.

Include your /var/log/Xorg.0.log as this is probably an interaction
between your WM and the Xorg driver.

If you're using a Debina-packaged X driver, note that, if not, CLEARLY
note that you're using a proprietary or third-party video driver.

The package maintainer can decide if this is something that needs to be
addressed, but at least there will be a record of the issue.  If others
have a similar (or more severe) problem, they may be able to draw a
connection between the two.

Much better than a mailing list mention.

-- 
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  Robot Wrangler / Staff Psychologist| When you seek unlimited power
Krell Power Systems Unlimited|  Go to Krell!


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Weird WM behavior after changing video cards

[Ron Johnson]

Sid (up-to-date)
xfce
nvidia driver 260.19.44-1

After switching an old 7300 card for a GeForce 210 (both are 
fanless), I see that the WM has changed behavior in various odd but 
tolerable manners.


These WM items are now white instead of following the theme:
1. Drop-down menu bg color
2. Button bg color
3. Drop-down menu "items"
4. Highlighted drop-down menu items (which makes them invisible)

I'm sure there are other problems that I haven't found...

This email isn't to ask for help (mainly since I don't plan on 
replacing nvidia with nouveau), but just to get it out on the web in 
case others have the same problems.


--
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Re: any pages listing text mode resolutions of video cards?

[s. keeling]

Daniel B. <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> 
>  However, I'd like to be able to know what text mode a card supports
>  the next time I buy a video card in case I don't want to use
>  framebuffer mode.

Find a machine with that card, boot from a live CD, give it vga=ask
for a kernel boot parm, and test.  I believe that offers a menu of
sorts.  This is non-fb mode, btw.  This is how we used it before fb
was invented.  :-)

Slackware has always had the slickest and smartest, out of the box,
console display mgmt. (font choice config, and not blitzing my chosen
vga= thing with something embedded somewhere in /etc/init.d/* that
does `console_reset` of some sort).  I'm still hunting for that in
Debian.


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Re: any pages listing text mode resolutions of video cards?

[Daniel B.]

Douglas A. Tutty wrote:

On Tue, Nov 13, 2007 at 12:26:33AM -0500, Daniel B. wrote:

Kelly Clowers wrote:

On Nov 12, 2007 7:24 AM, Daniel B. <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

Kelly Clowers wrote:

On Nov 11, 2007 7:46 PM, Daniel B. <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

I've been having trouble finding out the text-mode resolutions of
video cards.  Does anyone know of a good compilation of that
information?

Here is a list of modes:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VESA_BIOS_Extensions#Linux_video_mode_numbers

I think any card that supports VESA probably has to support
1280x1024 and 24 bits (see the table higher up on that page)

Actually, I was talking about text-mode resolutions (as I wrote
above), not graphics-mode resolutions.

Ok, I found it in that Wikipedia article:

Modes 264-268 (vesa's numbers, not the kernel's) are text modes.
264 (0108h) is 80x60, 265 (0109h) is 132x25
266 (010Ah) is 132x43, 267 (010Bh) is 132x50
268 (010Ch) is 132x60.


Actually, what I meant was the text-mode resolutions supported by
specific video cards.  That is, information usable to choose which
card to get.  My old card did 132x60.  My new card did 132x44.  In
case I buy a new card, I want to know which modes a given card
supports.  I haven't been able to find that information.  (I haven't
found any compilation for multiple cards; the manufacturer's page
for my new card doesn't mention the text modes.)



So to be clear, you are specifically __not__ wanting to use a
framebuffer which uses graphic mode and is therefore slower.


Not necessarily.  I'm trying using a framebuffer mode to see how
it is.

However, I'd like to be able to know what text mode a card supports
the next time I buy a video card in case I don't want to use
framebuffer mode.

Daniel
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Re: any pages listing text mode resolutions of video cards?

[Douglas A. Tutty]

On Tue, Nov 13, 2007 at 12:26:33AM -0500, Daniel B. wrote:
> Kelly Clowers wrote:
> >On Nov 12, 2007 7:24 AM, Daniel B. <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >>Kelly Clowers wrote:
> >>>On Nov 11, 2007 7:46 PM, Daniel B. <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >>>>I've been having trouble finding out the text-mode resolutions of
> >>>>video cards.  Does anyone know of a good compilation of that
> >>>>information?
> >>>Here is a list of modes:
> >>>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VESA_BIOS_Extensions#Linux_video_mode_numbers
> >>>
> >>>I think any card that supports VESA probably has to support
> >>>1280x1024 and 24 bits (see the table higher up on that page)
> >>Actually, I was talking about text-mode resolutions (as I wrote
> >>above), not graphics-mode resolutions.
> >
> >Ok, I found it in that Wikipedia article:
> >
> >Modes 264-268 (vesa's numbers, not the kernel's) are text modes.
> >264 (0108h) is 80x60, 265 (0109h) is 132x25
> >266 (010Ah) is 132x43, 267 (010Bh) is 132x50
> >268 (010Ch) is 132x60.
> 
> 
> Actually, what I meant was the text-mode resolutions supported by
> specific video cards.  That is, information usable to choose which
> card to get.  My old card did 132x60.  My new card did 132x44.  In
> case I buy a new card, I want to know which modes a given card
> supports.  I haven't been able to find that information.  (I haven't
> found any compilation for multiple cards; the manufacturer's page
> for my new card doesn't mention the text modes.)
> 

So to be clear, you are specifically __not__ wanting to use a
framebuffer which uses graphic mode and is therefore slower.

Doug.


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Re: any pages listing text mode resolutions of video cards?

[Daniel B.]

Kelly Clowers wrote:

On Nov 12, 2007 7:24 AM, Daniel B. <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

Kelly Clowers wrote:

On Nov 11, 2007 7:46 PM, Daniel B. <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

I've been having trouble finding out the text-mode resolutions of
video cards.  Does anyone know of a good compilation of that
information?

Here is a list of modes:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VESA_BIOS_Extensions#Linux_video_mode_numbers

I think any card that supports VESA probably has to support
1280x1024 and 24 bits (see the table higher up on that page)

Actually, I was talking about text-mode resolutions (as I wrote
above), not graphics-mode resolutions.


Ok, I found it in that Wikipedia article:

Modes 264-268 (vesa's numbers, not the kernel's) are text modes.
264 (0108h) is 80x60, 265 (0109h) is 132x25
266 (010Ah) is 132x43, 267 (010Bh) is 132x50
268 (010Ch) is 132x60.



Actually, what I meant was the text-mode resolutions supported by
specific video cards.  That is, information usable to choose which
card to get.  My old card did 132x60.  My new card did 132x44.  In
case I buy a new card, I want to know which modes a given card
supports.  I haven't been able to find that information.  (I haven't
found any compilation for multiple cards; the manufacturer's page
for my new card doesn't mention the text modes.)

Daniel
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Re: any pages listing text mode resolutions of video cards?

[Daniel B.]

Jochen Schulz wrote:

Daniel B.:

Kevin,


And setting vga=771 or similar in your kernel options?

Yes.  I've been using vga=10 in my kernel options (via LILO) to set
the virtual console text mode resolution at boot time.


I am not absolutely sure, but I don't think vga=10 gives you a real
framebuffer. 


Right, it does not.  That's what I have been using up until now,
to select a video card hardware text mode (instead of selecting a
kernel framebuffer mode using video card hardware graphics mode
(assuming I understand things right)).

> It just changes the font, which may result in more
characters on your display. 


Actually, it doesn't change the font (or just change the font);
it does change frequencies and the total number of pixels available
for the hardware to use to display text.


...


vga=771 (and similar values) on the other hand really switches display
resolution (and color depth) and is most certainly what you want.


Yeah, I'm trying that range of numbers and framebuffers now.



Hey, a related problem is that in graphics mode, the X server won't
use any mode where the dot clock is higher than 125 MHz, even though
the video card goes to 230MhZ.

(I made a 125MHz mode line and it worked; I changed it to 126 MHz and
the server excluded it, and it's not excluded because of horizontal
or vertical frequencies outside the monitor's range.)

/usr/share/doc/xserver-xfree86/README.ati.gz says

  ... maximum allowed clock frequency ... 3D Rage adapters.  For
  now, clocks will, by default, be limited to 80MHz, 135MHz, 170MHz,
  200MHz or 230MHz, depending on the specific controller.  This
  limit can only be increased (up to a driver-calculated absolute
  maximum) through the DACSpeed specification in XF86Config.

That doesn't quite match up:  The driver (or server) seems to have
a limit at 125 MHz, not any mentioned in that read-me file.

Anyway, I tried the "DacSpeed xxx" option in XF86Config-4 to set
tell the server and driver the limit, but it doesn't seem to have
any effect.

In fact, when I tried "DacSpeed 114", it did _not_ prevent use of a
mode with a dot clock of 125 Mhz.  It's like it's getting ignored
entirely.


My X server is Sarge's xserver-xfree86 4.3.0.xxx.
The server's driver is the "ati" driver.
The video card is an ATI Radeon Rage XL 8MB PCI card.


Thanks,
Daniel
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Re: any pages listing text mode resolutions of video cards?

[Kelly Clowers]

On Nov 12, 2007 7:24 AM, Daniel B. <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Kelly Clowers wrote:
> > On Nov 11, 2007 7:46 PM, Daniel B. <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >> I've been having trouble finding out the text-mode resolutions of
> >> video cards.  Does anyone know of a good compilation of that
> >> information?
> >
> > Here is a list of modes:
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VESA_BIOS_Extensions#Linux_video_mode_numbers
> >
> > I think any card that supports VESA probably has to support
> > 1280x1024 and 24 bits (see the table higher up on that page)
>
> Actually, I was talking about text-mode resolutions (as I wrote
> above), not graphics-mode resolutions.

Ok, I found it in that Wikipedia article:

Modes 264-268 (vesa's numbers, not the kernel's) are text modes.
264 (0108h) is 80x60, 265 (0109h) is 132x25
266 (010Ah) is 132x43, 267 (010Bh) is 132x50
268 (010Ch) is 132x60.


> >> Relatedly, are they any good tutorials on switching from using
> >> hardware text-mode for non-X virtual consoles to using ... um ...
> >> whatever the name is of the feature of having textual virtual
> >> consoles generated using hardware graphics mode?
> >
> > Framebuffer? I am not sure I understand what you are asking,
> > but I think you want your VTs to use higher resolutions and be
> > graphics capable
>
> Yes, in my virtual consoles I want to see text in a higher
> resolution that the video card can provide in hardware text mode.
>
>  > e.g. fbi http://packages.debian.org/etch/fbi
>
> Thanks.
>
> >
> > If that is what you mean, you need to edit your grub menu.lst
> > file and add to the kernel line a reference like vga=791
>
> Is that number (791) a mode specific to frame buffers, or was it
> just an example?

Well, I use the framebuffer @ 791. I have never heard of the
vga=10 that you mentioned. All the modes I have seen are over 700.
I guess the lower ones are text modes (not sure how they relate
to vesa's numbers).

The Debian kernels have the framebuffer drivers compiled in, so
I would just try vga=791 and see if it gives you what you want.

You also mentioned speed. I don't know how fast your computer
is, but I have used 791 on a P3 @ 700 MHz and it was fine.


Cheers,
Kelly Clowers


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Re: any pages listing text mode resolutions of video cards?

[Jochen Schulz]

Daniel B.:
> Kevin,
> 
>> And setting vga=771 or similar in your kernel options?
> 
> Yes.  I've been using vga=10 in my kernel options (via LILO) to set
> the virtual console text mode resolution at boot time.

I am not absolutely sure, but I don't think vga=10 gives you a real
framebuffer. It just changes the font, which may result in more
characters on your display. If your monitor has an on-screen menu you
should be able to verify that.

vga=771 (and similar values) on the other hand really switches display
resolution (and color depth) and is most certainly what you want. A
virtual terminal in 1024x768 pixels looks really nice. I recommend
installing console-terminus as well.

J.
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Re: any pages listing text mode resolutions of video cards?

[Daniel B.]

Kelly Clowers wrote:

On Nov 11, 2007 7:46 PM, Daniel B. <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

I've been having trouble finding out the text-mode resolutions of
video cards.  Does anyone know of a good compilation of that
information?


Here is a list of modes:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VESA_BIOS_Extensions#Linux_video_mode_numbers

I think any card that supports VESA probably has to support
1280x1024 and 24 bits (see the table higher up on that page)


Actually, I was talking about text-mode resolutions (as I wrote
above), not graphics-mode resolutions.



Relatedly, are they any good tutorials on switching from using
hardware text-mode for non-X virtual consoles to using ... um ...
whatever the name is of the feature of having textual virtual
consoles generated using hardware graphics mode?


Framebuffer? I am not sure I understand what you are asking,
but I think you want your VTs to use higher resolutions and be
graphics capable 


Yes, in my virtual consoles I want to see text in a higher
resolution that the video card can provide in hardware text mode.

> e.g. fbi http://packages.debian.org/etch/fbi

Thanks.



If that is what you mean, you need to edit your grub menu.lst
file and add to the kernel line a reference like vga=791


Is that number (791) a mode specific to frame buffers, or was it
just an example?



http://wiki.ubuntu.com/FrameBuffer


Thanks.


Daniel
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Re: any pages listing text mode resolutions of video cards?

[Daniel B.]

Kevin,

Kevin Mark wrote:

On Sun, Nov 11, 2007 at 10:46:53PM -0500, Daniel B. wrote:

I've been having trouble finding out the text-mode resolutions of
video cards.  Does anyone know of a good compilation of that
information?

Relatedly, are they any good tutorials on switching from using
hardware text-mode for non-X virtual consoles to using ... um ...
whatever the name is of the feature of having textual virtual
consoles generated using hardware graphics mode?


Are you talking about 'frame buffer' programs? fbxine, fbi, ...


Yeah, "frame buffer" is the term I've heard.  Thanks.

Does using frame buffers let the kernel provide (text-mode) virtual
consoles using the video hardware's graphics mode (that is, the
kernel tells the hardware what pixels to display, as opposed to
telling it only what characters to display)?

I take it frame buffer mode lets one use any text resolution that
"fits" within the video card's full graphics resolution?


Is there a good starting point in the assorted Debian and Linux
documentation for trying frame-buffer mode?




And setting vga=771 or similar in your kernel options?


Yes.  I've been using vga=10 in my kernel options (via LILO) to set
the virtual console text mode resolution at boot time.

I was using 132x60 on my old video card (a Diamond Viper 330/nVidia
RIVA TNT2 AGP card).  (Yeah, yeah; I know; it's ancient.)

I bought a new, basic video card (an ATI Radeon Rage XL PCI card).
(Hey, I did write "basic.")

(In Windows, the driver for the old card seems to be causing
problems (severe file system corruption), and there doesn't seem to
be a newer version of the driver, so I bought another, different
video card, hoping that the new card's driver wouldn't have the
same problem.)

Unfortunately, the new card's text modes only go up to 132x44
(losing me 25% of the virtual console height I'm used to).


That's why I was asking about where to find the text-mode
resolutions of cards (in case I want to buy a different card that
handles at least the resolution I had).


Of course, if using frame-buffer-based virtual consoles provides the
text mode, I don't have to care about the video card's text modes.

How slow is frame-buffer mode?  I think I tried it a couple years
ago and it was noticeably slow enough that I went back to hardware
text modes.

(Yes, my CPU is old (relatively slow) too right now.)


Thanks,
Daniel
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Re: any pages listing text mode resolutions of video cards?

[Kelly Clowers]

On Nov 11, 2007 7:46 PM, Daniel B. <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I've been having trouble finding out the text-mode resolutions of
> video cards.  Does anyone know of a good compilation of that
> information?

Here is a list of modes:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VESA_BIOS_Extensions#Linux_video_mode_numbers

I think any card that supports VESA probably has to support
1280x1024 and 24 bits (see the table higher up on that page)

> Relatedly, are they any good tutorials on switching from using
> hardware text-mode for non-X virtual consoles to using ... um ...
> whatever the name is of the feature of having textual virtual
> consoles generated using hardware graphics mode?

Framebuffer? I am not sure I understand what you are asking,
but I think you want your VTs to use higher resolutions and be
graphics capable e.g. fbi http://packages.debian.org/etch/fbi

If that is what you mean, you need to edit your grub menu.lst
file and add to the kernel line a reference like vga=791

http://wiki.ubuntu.com/FrameBuffer


Cheers,
Kelly Clowers


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Re: any pages listing text mode resolutions of video cards?

[Kevin Mark]

On Sun, Nov 11, 2007 at 10:46:53PM -0500, Daniel B. wrote:
> I've been having trouble finding out the text-mode resolutions of
> video cards.  Does anyone know of a good compilation of that
> information?
>
> Relatedly, are they any good tutorials on switching from using
> hardware text-mode for non-X virtual consoles to using ... um ...
> whatever the name is of the feature of having textual virtual
> consoles generated using hardware graphics mode?
>
Are you talking about 'frame buffer' programs? fbxine, fbi, ...
And setting vga=771 or similar in your kernel options?
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any pages listing text mode resolutions of video cards?

[Daniel B.]

I've been having trouble finding out the text-mode resolutions of
video cards.  Does anyone know of a good compilation of that
information?

Relatedly, are they any good tutorials on switching from using
hardware text-mode for non-X virtual consoles to using ... um ...
whatever the name is of the feature of having textual virtual
consoles generated using hardware graphics mode?

Thanks,
Daniel
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Re: xorg cannot read V_BIOS Intel D945GTP + 2 video cards / a way out

[Nelson Castillo]

***  2) Downgrade to xorg 7.0 since this setup was working before

  I would not like to to this, but it's an option. My dual setup worked
  out of the box in a previous xorg version. I wonder how I could use
  an older xorg in Debian sid.


Ok. A few hours and I got it. Let's reply myself in case someone has the
same problem (and to avoid wasting someone else's time).

The "nv" driver does not support dual head and it might never will. We
have to wait for  nouveau (http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/).

http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=420537

The problem was not the upgraded xorg. When I previously had this
setup, I had the privative nvidia driver (legacy version) managing
my secondary video card. I lend that video card a few days to a friend,
and when it came back I had changed the nvidia legacy driver (since
I was trying compiz, which BTW, seems to be broken in Unstable right
now).

So I could not start the dual head setup again, and I couldn't use the
new privative nvidia driver with my old card (NV18 [GeForce4 MX 440 AGP 8x]).
The "nv" driver doesn't know how to softboot this video card when it's
a secondary
video card.

So, I was trying to use this setup:

* NV44 [GeForce 6200 LE]  (Primary in BIOS) (both nv/nvidia drivers)
* NV18 [GeForce4 MX 440 AGP 8x] (nv driver)

And it seems it was never going to work.

Now I have:

* NV18 [GeForce4 MX 440 AGP 8x]  (Primary in BIOS) (nv driver)
* NV44 [GeForce 6200 LE] (current nvidia drivers)

And it works. Xinerama + Gnome again. No compiz, but I'd rather have
dual head (with xinerama) than a 3d desktop.

Here is the relevant data :

Xorg configuration:
 http://www.pastebin.ca/499299
Xorg log:
 http://www.pastebin.ca/499301


***  4) Do the int10 initialization myself with another program

 (or another kind of initialization).


That was the privative nvidia driver. Let's way for nouveau.

Regards,
N.-


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xorg cannot read V_BIOS Intel D945GTP + 2 video cards / a way out

[Nelson Castillo]

Hi.

More than one month ago I asked in this list about an issue with
my current setup that does not allow me to use my second PCI
video card [1]. While it happens with an Intel D945GTP [2], I don't think
this is specific to the main board as some say (I'm not sure).
Anyway, the BIOS doesn't show a V_BIOS for the secondary video
card.

[1] http://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2007/04/msg01227.html
[2] http://www.intel.com/products/motherboard/D945GTP/index.htm

I use Debian sid.

lspci -v | grep -i vga
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV44 [GeForce
6200 LE] (rev a1) (prog-if 00 [VGA])
05:01.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV18 [GeForce4
MX 440 AGP 8x] (rev a4) (prog-if 00 [VGA])
   Subsystem: eVga.com. Corp. Unknown device b089


I see 4 ways out, and 2 of them are viable for me now. I'd like to know
if you had come into similar issues before and what I should try now.
I placed the questions at the end of this email.

***  1) Get a better motherboard or Get a dual output video card

 I wouldn't like to do this one. If the other options involve more than
 a few hours I guess it will be cheaper for me to get a dual-output
 video card. I'd prefer to fix the problem since I'd have to wait sometime
 before getting the new video card and I'd have 2 spare video
 cards around.

***  2) Downgrade to xorg 7.0 since this setup was working before

 I would not like to to this, but it's an option. My dual setup worked
 out of the box in a previous xorg version. I wonder how I could use
 an older xorg in Debian sid.

***  3) Apply the patches that allow me to load video ROM from
a file [3].

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=227851#c7

I tried to compile xorg with this patch, but the xorg version in sid was
very different. I tried to integrate the patch by hand but it wouldn't be
easy since some functions have gone somewhere else in the xorg tree.

It seems this patch would work around my problem since it worked for
someone else, here is what he got. Check the second line.

 (II) RADEON(1): initializing int10
 (**) RADEON(1): Option "BiosLocation" "file:/root/r9200.bios"
 (II) RADEON(1): Read 52 kB V_BIOS from file:/root/r9200.bios
 (--) RADEON(1): Chipset: "ATI Radeon 9250 5960 (AGP)" (ChipID = 0x5960)
 (--) RADEON(1): Linear framebuffer at 0x5800
 (--) RADEON(1): BIOS at 0xfffe
 (II) RADEON(1): PCI card detected
 https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/attachment.cgi?id=148129

***  4) Do the int10 initialization myself with another program

(or another kind of initialization).

http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/xorg/2005-July/008649.html

Well, this is new to me.  It seems I cat get to initialize the card
using another method that doesn't use the Legacy VGA code
(http://jonsmirl.googlepages.com/graphics.html).

***

Now the questions:

* Is there any support in the Linux Kernel that I could use to
 initialize/use the second video card? fbdev?

* What would you try if you wanted to get the second video card started?

Shall I file a bug? Xorg should take care of this. I have used more
than one video card with previous versions, with the same hardware
I have now.

* What mailing list should I try for this issue? (If it's too specific
for debian-user).

Thanks,
Nelson.-


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Re: Two video cards / Xorg crashes in sid

[Nelson Castillo]

On 4/7/07, Nelson Castillo <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> That's a good start, you could also try older versions of
> xserver-xorg-video-nv and xserver-xorg-core and see if it broke in a
> specific upgrade. You can find older packages here,
> http://snapshot.debian.net/
>
> Otherwise, I suggest you use the reportbug tool to file a bug report for
> xserver-xorg-video-nv.


I went to experimental and I found something.

   aptitude install xserver-xorg-video-nv/experimental
xserver-xorg-core/experimental
   libdrm2/experimental xfonts-scalable

It has to do with "Cannot read V_BIOS (3)". It seems that it happens
with a lot of people when they have a secondary video card in some boards.

There's a weird solution (at least weird to me :)) that involves extracting
a ROM for the video card and placing it in a file that Xorg will use for
this card.

https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2597#c36

I don't have such rom in my /sys filesystem. But still I'm trying


Well, this is an explanation of what is happening.

https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2597#c52

Now my time is over. Will try again sometime in the future.

  Some system BIOSes do not assign resources to any but the primary
 VGA chip. This is an actual BIOS bug, and leaves the OS with little chance
 to get it fired up after the fact - particularly if the VGA chip
resides on a bridged
 PCI bus.

Regards,
Nelson.-


This is what i get with "X -configure" :

This is a pre-release version of the X server from The X.Org Foundation.
It is not supported in any way.
Bugs may be filed in the bugzilla at http://bugs.freedesktop.org/.
Select the "xorg" product for bugs you find in this release.
Before reporting bugs in pre-release versions please check the
latest version in the X.Org Foundation git repository.
See http://wiki.x.org/wiki/GitPage for git access instructions.

X Window System Version 1.2.99.905 (1.3.0 RC 5)
Release Date: 05 April 2007
X Protocol Version 11, Revision 0, Release 1.2.99.905
Build Operating System: Linux Debian
Current Operating System: Linux gaira 2.6.18-4-686 #1 SMP Mon Mar 26
17:17:36 UTC 2007 i686
Build Date: 06 April 2007
   Before reporting problems, check http://wiki.x.org
   to make sure that you have the latest version.
Module Loader present
Markers: (--) probed, (**) from config file, (==) default setting,
   (++) from command line, (!!) notice, (II) informational,
   (WW) warning, (EE) error, (NI) not implemented, (??) unknown.
(==) Log file: "/var/log/Xorg.0.log", Time: Sat Apr  7 20:23:11 2007
List of video drivers:
   s3
   sis
   radeon
   tdfx
   glint
   voodoo
   v4l
   imstt
   i810
   tseng
   r128
   nvidia
   siliconmotion
   tga
   chips
   sisusb
   cirrus
   rendition
   via
   mga
   nv
   savage
   s3virge
   i740
   ati
   dummy
   trident
   vmware
   i128
   atimisc
   cyrix
   ark
   nsc
   apm
   neomagic
   newport
   fbdev
   vesa
   vga
(++) Using config file: "/root/xorg.conf.new"
(WW) NVIDIA: No matching Device section for instance (BusID PCI:5:1:0) found
(EE) Cannot find empty range to map base to
(EE) NV(1): Cannot read V_BIOS (3)


Xorg detected your mouse at device /dev/input/mice.
Please check your config if the mouse is still not
operational, as by default Xorg tries to autodetect
the protocol.

Xorg has configured a multihead system, please check your config.

Your xorg.conf file is /root/xorg.conf.new

To test the server, run 'X -config /root/xorg.conf.new'


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Re: Two video cards / Xorg crashes in sid

[Nelson Castillo]

That's a good start, you could also try older versions of
xserver-xorg-video-nv and xserver-xorg-core and see if it broke in a
specific upgrade. You can find older packages here,
http://snapshot.debian.net/

Otherwise, I suggest you use the reportbug tool to file a bug report for
xserver-xorg-video-nv.



I went to experimental and I found something.

  aptitude install xserver-xorg-video-nv/experimental
xserver-xorg-core/experimental
  libdrm2/experimental xfonts-scalable

It has to do with "Cannot read V_BIOS (3)". It seems that it happens
with a lot of people when they have a secondary video card in some boards.

There's a weird solution (at least weird to me :)) that involves extracting
a ROM for the video card and placing it in a file that Xorg will use for
this card.

https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2597#c36

I don't have such rom in my /sys filesystem. But still I'm trying.

Regards,
Nelson.-

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Re: Two video cards / Xorg crashes in sid

[Sven Arvidsson]

On Fri, 2007-04-06 at 17:01 -0500, Nelson Castillo wrote:
> When it crashes, the screen goes black and the CPU usage increases
> (the CPU fan goes mad :)).
> 
> > If you have time, try each card separately and see if you can pinpoint
> > the crash to a specific configuration.
> 
> Done! I didn't get the back trace, but I isolated the crash.
> 
> The log:
> http://www.pastebin.ca/427621
> The configuration:
> http://www.pastebin.ca/427623
> 
> Note that the primary video card works (I'm using it now) with both the
> free and the privative drivers (using the free driver now).

That's a good start, you could also try older versions of
xserver-xorg-video-nv and xserver-xorg-core and see if it broke in a
specific upgrade. You can find older packages here,
http://snapshot.debian.net/

Otherwise, I suggest you use the reportbug tool to file a bug report for
xserver-xorg-video-nv.

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Re: Two video cards / Xorg crashes in sid

[Nelson Castillo]

On 4/6/07, Sven Arvidsson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

On Fri, 2007-04-06 at 15:48 -0400, Greg Folkert wrote:
> What nVidia modules are you using? 9129 was the last version that
> supported the NV18 chipset. I know, I have an exact duplicate of the
> card.

Looks like he's using the free nv driver.


Yes.


dpkg -l| grep nvidia

Post the output from there.


Nothing new... This installation has 2 years and I've had 5 about
different video
cards (and 3 PCs) since then. Same installation.

rc  nvidia-glx-dev   1.0.8776-4
 NVIDIA binary XFree86 4.x / Xorg driver deve
rc  nvidia-kernel-2.4.27-2-386   1.0.7174+1
 NVIDIA binary kernel module for Linux 2.4.27
rc  nvidia-kernel-2.6.14arhuaco.keystrokes   1.0.7174-4
 NVIDIA binary kernel module for Linux 2.6.14
rc  nvidia-kernel-2.6.15-1-k71.0.8178+2
 NVIDIA binary kernel module for Linux 2.6.15
rc  nvidia-kernel-2.6.15arhuaco  1.0.8178-1
 NVIDIA binary
kernel module for Linux 2.6.15

I don't mind using the non-free driver
(You know, those drivers suck in Linux, but there aren't many choices),
But I tried it before and the card also crashes.

When it crashes, the screen goes black and the CPU usage increases
(the CPU fan goes mad :)).


If you have time, try each card separately and see if you can pinpoint
the crash to a specific configuration.


Done! I didn't get the back trace, but I isolated the crash.

The log:
http://www.pastebin.ca/427621
The configuration:
http://www.pastebin.ca/427623

Note that the primary video card works (I'm using it now) with both the
free and the privative drivers (using the free driver now).

Thanks,
Nelson.-

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Re: Two video cards / Xorg crashes in sid

[Sven Arvidsson]

On Fri, 2007-04-06 at 15:48 -0400, Greg Folkert wrote:
> What nVidia modules are you using? 9129 was the last version that
> supported the NV18 chipset. I know, I have an exact duplicate of the
> card.

Looks like he's using the free nv driver.

Anyway, getting a backtrace of the crash, preferably with debug packages
and then filing a bug report would be a good start. (Be sure to look
through the existent bug reports first, it may already have been filed
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?pkg=xserver-xorg-video-nv )

If possible, try with Xorg from experimental, it's usually a good idea
to use the version closest to upstream.

If you have time, try each card separately and see if you can pinpoint
the crash to a specific configuration.

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Re: Two video cards / Xorg crashes in sid

[Greg Folkert]

On Fri, 2007-04-06 at 14:38 -0500, Nelson Castillo wrote:
> Hi.
> 
> I had a successful setup a long time ago with Xorg and xinerama
> in Debian sid. I use 2 monitors and 2 video cards.
> 
> It used to work well, but now I doesn't work anymore, even with the
> same configuration file I had before. I didn't have the time to debug, until
> today.
> 
>   Has something similar happened to any of you recently?
>   Any of you having trouble with the most recent Xorg?
> 
> Here's my configuration file:
> 
>   http://www.pastebin.ca/427419
> 
> lspci :
> 
> 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV44 [GeForce
> 6200 LE] (rev a1)
> 05:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV18 [GeForce4
> MX 440 AGP 8x] (rev a4)

What nVidia modules are you using? 9129 was the last version that
supported the NV18 chipset. I know, I have an exact duplicate of the
card.

dpkg -l| grep nvidia

Post the output from there.
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Two video cards / Xorg crashes in sid

[Nelson Castillo]

Hi.

I had a successful setup a long time ago with Xorg and xinerama
in Debian sid. I use 2 monitors and 2 video cards.

It used to work well, but now I doesn't work anymore, even with the
same configuration file I had before. I didn't have the time to debug, until
today.

 Has something similar happened to any of you recently?
 Any of you having trouble with the most recent Xorg?

Here's my configuration file:

 http://www.pastebin.ca/427419

lspci :

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV44 [GeForce
6200 LE] (rev a1)
05:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV18 [GeForce4
MX 440 AGP 8x] (rev a4)


Regards,
Nelson.-


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Re: video cards, the mouse, Xfree86 and Debian installation.....

[Andrew Sackville-West]

On Tue, Oct 17, 2006 at 11:55:05AM +, Michael Fothergill wrote:
> >Depending what you want as a window manager etc.. You have to scan 10
> 
> OK.  I will now reinstall and scan the pants of the entire 
> distribution.

STOP! You don't have to reinstall. You've got a working CLI right?
you're golden now. You don't even have to scan anymore disks either as
you're on broadband. please read "man sources.list" to learn how to
set up the apt-get system. use the main debian mirrors for now but do
change to another one soon to help spread the load. Then read "man
apt-get" so you understand how that works. Once you've got a working
CLI and an internet connection, you can download and install whatever
packages you want on your system trivially. 

for example:

apt-get install x-window-system 

will download and install all the packages needed to run the
x-window-system. its really simple.

to reconfigure the x-server, if you're having problems like specifying
the wrong driver issue the following

dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xfree86

that will take you through the setup of the xserver and write a new
config file for you.


> 
> I now think I really need a DVD on my machine.
> 

nah. pulling packages over the net is so simple. read up on the whole
apt system. of course, you may still want a DVD, but only for the fun
stuff :)


> Vesa came up as default.  I will try it.

Vesa should work with everything. You can get the system running with
Vesa and then try reconfiguring your way into the "right" drivers for
your hardware.

> >
> >psaux or something like this?
> 

/dev/psaux is the device for a PS mouse.

hth.

A



signature.asc
Description: Digital signature

Re: video cards, the mouse, Xfree86 and Debian installation.....

[Michael Fothergill]

I have installed gnome etc as you advised.  Xwindows is working and I am 
writing this email on a browser I just fired up on my new Debian OS... 
Gnome looks good.


The windows are much nicer than Fedora's.  This seems like a powerful OS 
indeed.

It will take a little getting used to.

I should probably reconfigure the Xwindows to make it more precisely set up. 
 I can also have a go at configuring the printer.  I am well accustomed to 
doing this in Fedora.


Regards,

Michael Fothergill



From: Kent West <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: debian-user@lists.debian.org
Subject: Re: video cards, the mouse, Xfree86 and Debian installation.
Date: Tue, 17 Oct 2006 08:21:54 -0500

Kent West wrote:
> gpm also is a quicker means of
> experimenting with mouse types than trying to "startx" over and over
> until you get it right.
>

Or, to find the correct location, you can type "cat /dev/psaux" and move
the mouse around; if you see a bunch of garbage appear on the screen,
you've found the correct device. Ctrl-C to stop it. If "/dev/psaux"
doesn't work, you can try "/dev/ttySxx" (replace the xx with 00, 01,
etc), or "/dev/input/mice". One of these is likely to work.

Be aware that if just the right type of garbage is produced, it can
result in undesired behavior, like scrambling your terminal (the command
"reset", typed blindly, will often, but not always fix this) or even
locking up your keyboard. Then you'd either have to ssh in from another
computer to regain control of your computer (assuming you've set up
incoming ssh access, which you probably haven't), or cycle the power,
which is somewhat rough on the OS.


--
Kent West
Westing Peacefully <http://kentwest.blogspot.com>


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Re: video cards, the mouse, Xfree86 and Debian installation.....

[Kent West]

Kent West wrote:
> gpm also is a quicker means of
> experimenting with mouse types than trying to "startx" over and over
> until you get it right.
>   

Or, to find the correct location, you can type "cat /dev/psaux" and move
the mouse around; if you see a bunch of garbage appear on the screen,
you've found the correct device. Ctrl-C to stop it. If "/dev/psaux"
doesn't work, you can try "/dev/ttySxx" (replace the xx with 00, 01,
etc), or "/dev/input/mice". One of these is likely to work.

Be aware that if just the right type of garbage is produced, it can
result in undesired behavior, like scrambling your terminal (the command
"reset", typed blindly, will often, but not always fix this) or even
locking up your keyboard. Then you'd either have to ssh in from another
computer to regain control of your computer (assuming you've set up
incoming ssh access, which you probably haven't), or cycle the power,
which is somewhat rough on the OS.


-- 
Kent West
Westing Peacefully 


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Re: video cards, the mouse, Xfree86 and Debian installation.....

[Kent West]

Michael Fothergill wrote:
> Dear Debian folks,
>
> I have installed Debian on my PC here.  It runs a 1200MHz Athlon CPU
> and has one 20GB disk on it with Fedora Core 5 on it and now after
> deleted Windows a second disk (primary) which is 40GB in size has now
> got the Desktop Debian installation on it.
> I spent quite a while downloading the 15 or so CD iso images from
> mirror site using wget and bittorrent (bittorrent was a waste of time
> - not enough fellow downloaders).
Most folks only need the first one or two; the others have lots of
less-used packages, and probably the source for all the packages. You
only needed to download and scan the other 13 or 14 if you needed
packages/source that are not on the first couple.

Most folks who have the bandwidth capability for downloading 15 CDs
won't even go the CD route (unless they need the CDs for some reason);
instead, they'll download a minimal CD image which is just enough to get
the system started, and then pull everything they need directly from the
'Net. Much, much easier, in my opinion.

> At the moment the OS is there and boots etc but only in command line
> mode.
>
> But before talking about this I have some other queries.
>
> When I loaded up the installer it automatically found and configured
> mu cable broadband.

Ah, you do have broadband. Yep, unless you need the CDs for some other
machine, I'd suggest that you've wasted your time with these 15 CDs; you
probably would have found it easier to just download the minimal
installer CD and pull the rest of what you need directly off the net.

> We are not talking feather linux here.

Debian has tons of packages, but you can install very few, as in Feather
Linux, or you can install much. The scanning of the CDs is only so your
system will know what packages are available on those CDs.

> I installed again and scanned the first four of the CDs this time and
> then installed the Desktop.  My video card is an SiS 630/730 according
> to Fedora.  I put SiS in at what I think was the video card
> manufacturer choice setting in install.

You can see what the kernel sees the card as with the "lspci" command.

> There was then some stuff about Power PCs and video card bus
> identifiers.  I do not know what the bus identifier is for the video
> card on this machine and I am not sure how to determine this.

Most people, including you I daresay, can leave this identifier blank.
(It's also useful when using multiple monitors on your box.)

> I got to the mouse autoconfiguration bit.  I tried this but maybe it
> didn't work properly.  It sounded like it thought I had a serial mouse
> but I think I have a 3 button PS mouse.

If it has a round connector, it's a PS-2 type of mouse (unless it's
really old, in which case it might be a proprietary bus). If it's a
nine-pin DB connector, it's serial. If it's a USB connector, it's USB.

> I think I should reinstall and then choose manual configuration of the
> mouse.  But maybe there is a way fire up the mouse installation
> routine from the command line interface in my current install which
> does boot and run

There are basically two mouse drivers; one for X, built into X, and one
for console, called GPM. I like to have both, so I install gpm
("aptitude install gpm") and configure it to repeat as ms3, and then
tell X to find the mouse on /dev/gpmdata. I tell gpm to find the mouse
on /dev/psaux for a PS-2 mouse, or /dev/ttySxx for a serial mouse, or
/dev/input/mice for a USB mouse. gpm also is a quicker means of
experimenting with mouse types than trying to "startx" over and over
until you get it right.

Or you can just stick with the X Window System driver; reconfigure X
(video, mouse, etc) with "dpkg-reconfigure xserver-common" (I believe;
it's been so long since I've had to mess with this sort of thing...).

> I also did what I could do configure Xwindows but was not successful
> it seems.

If you manually edit the /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 file, the automagic stuff
above (dpkg-reconfigure...) will no longer work until you follow the
instructions at the top of that file.

> The monitor I use is a 15 inch CRT Belinea device.   Belinea is not a
> manufacturer that X seems to know much about.   But I have got X work
> OK with it in Fedora.
>
> I don't know the horizontal and vertical refresh numbers for it.  But
> maybe I could use Fedora to tell me them and then put high quality
> information into Debian when configuring Xwindows for it.

That's a good plan; or just take your best guess (with the caveat that
older monitors don't have protection against being over-driven).

> When I tried startx I got a little cross and a little box in the
> middle of the screen that said things like "Xsession unable to start X
> no home/mikef .xsession file or Xsession file, no window manager, no
> terminal emulators found; aborting.

Oh, that's good. That means your X server is working. You just don't
have all the other accouterments needed.

Generally, "aptitude install x-window-

Re: video cards, the mouse, Xfree86 and Debian installation.....

[Michael Fothergill]

Thanks for responding,

mikef



From: M-L <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: debian-user@lists.debian.org
Subject: Re: video cards, the mouse, Xfree86 and Debian installation.
Date: Tue, 17 Oct 2006 21:42:25 +1000

On Tuesday 17 October 2006 21:10, Michael Fothergill shared this with us 
all:

>--> Dear Debian folks,
>-->
>--> I have installed Debian on my PC here.

Which Debian? Sarge, Etch or Sid?


*I am using Debian Sarge 3.1 release three.


>It runs a 1200MHz Athlon CPU and
> has --> one 20GB disk on it with Fedora Core 5 on it and now after 
deleted
> Windows a --> second disk (primary) which is 40GB in size has now got 
the

> Desktop Debian --> installation on it.
>-->
>--> At least I think it does.
>-->
>--> I have a few questions about the installation process.
>-->
>--> I spent quite a while downloading the 15 or so CD iso images from 
mirror

>--> site using wget and bittorrent (bittorrent was a waste of time - not
> enough --> fellow downloaders).
>-->
>--> I then burnt them to CDs and checked them for integrity one by one 
with

> the --> Debian installer.
>-->
>--> I installed the OS a number of times but I got problems getting the X
>--> windows to work.

As root:-
apt-get install x-window-system-core
or
apt-get install x-window-system

>-->
>--> At the moment the OS is there and boots etc but only in command line
> mode. -->

startx


>--> But before talking about this I have some other queries.
>-->
>--> When I loaded up the installer it automatically found and configured 
mu

>--> cable broadband.  It looked as though it made use of this to download
> some --> security upgrades while installing from the CDs.
>-->
>--> After I got through the partitioning and base install (it never has a
>--> problem with this) I got to the reboot and the tedious entering of
> passwords --> for root and the user.

Booted?

>-->
>--> I then rebooted and fired up the OS.

Why reboot again?

>At this stage it tells you to put
> the --> first CD in.  It scans through it for what it calls index files.
> It then --> comes at you with a cryptic instruction that says something
> like "If you --> have another CD in your install set please put it in 
now

> and get it --> scanned".  Well, I've got 15 of them..

Lucky, I have 19 and had a friend download them about 6 weeks ago, maybe
longer, because I am on dial up.


Gee that's tough.  I can download an iso here in about an hour and a half or 
so in wget.


>-->
>--> We are not talking feather linux here.
>-->
>--> So I experimented with this in a number of installs.  I found that if
> you --> scanned three of the fifteen CDs it seemed to be able give you 
the

> option of --> installing the Desktop install and the other five or so
> installs webserver, --> print server, donut server, Ronald Reagan 
neocortex
> server etc, and it then --> seemed to be able to finish the rest of 
install

> with some bugs in the font --> installation and some other quirks but
> basically it seemed to work. -->

Depending what you want as a window manager etc.. You have to scan 10


OK.  I will now reinstall and scan the pants of the entire 
distribution.



apt-cdrom add

>--> But if you tried to only scan one disk it then omitted the Desktop
> install --> option and only presented you with a choice of the remaining
> five.  If you --> tried to install then it worked ok but of course there
> was no XWindows at --> all just the command line.
>-->
>--> I then tried instaling again and this time I made a mistake of 
scanning

> the --> first binary twice before the others.  Then there was a problem
> with the apt --> get installation which was fatal and it had to be
> abandoned.
>-->
>--> How many of these CDs should be scanned at this stage for index 
files?

>-->
>--> All fifteen?

Would be good, but at least 10


I now think I really need a DVD on my machine.

>-->
>--> I wish I had a DVD player on this machine.
>-->
>--> I installed again and scanned the first four of the CDs this time and
> then --> installed the Desktop.  My video card is an SiS 630/730 
according

> to Fedora. -->   I put SiS in at what I think was the video card
> manufacturer choice --> setting in install.

What comes up as default? Try vesa?


Vesa came up as default.  I will try it.


>-->
>--> There was then some stuff about Power PCs and video card bus
> identifiers.  I --> do not know what the bus identifier is for the video
> card on this machine --> and I am not sure how to determine this.
>-->
>--> But  it seemed as though i

Re: video cards, the mouse, Xfree86 and Debian installation.....

[M-L]

On Tuesday 17 October 2006 21:10, Michael Fothergill shared this with us all:
>--> Dear Debian folks,
>-->
>--> I have installed Debian on my PC here.  

Which Debian? Sarge, Etch or Sid?

>It runs a 1200MHz Athlon CPU and 
> has --> one 20GB disk on it with Fedora Core 5 on it and now after deleted
> Windows a --> second disk (primary) which is 40GB in size has now got the
> Desktop Debian --> installation on it.
>-->
>--> At least I think it does.
>-->
>--> I have a few questions about the installation process.
>-->
>--> I spent quite a while downloading the 15 or so CD iso images from mirror
>--> site using wget and bittorrent (bittorrent was a waste of time - not
> enough --> fellow downloaders).
>-->
>--> I then burnt them to CDs and checked them for integrity one by one with
> the --> Debian installer.
>-->
>--> I installed the OS a number of times but I got problems getting the X
>--> windows to work.

As root:-
apt-get install x-window-system-core
or
apt-get install x-window-system

>-->
>--> At the moment the OS is there and boots etc but only in command line
> mode. -->

startx


>--> But before talking about this I have some other queries.
>-->
>--> When I loaded up the installer it automatically found and configured mu
>--> cable broadband.  It looked as though it made use of this to download
> some --> security upgrades while installing from the CDs.
>-->
>--> After I got through the partitioning and base install (it never has a
>--> problem with this) I got to the reboot and the tedious entering of
> passwords --> for root and the user.

Booted?

>-->
>--> I then rebooted and fired up the OS.  

Why reboot again?

>At this stage it tells you to put 
> the --> first CD in.  It scans through it for what it calls index files. 
> It then --> comes at you with a cryptic instruction that says something
> like "If you --> have another CD in your install set please put it in now
> and get it --> scanned".  Well, I've got 15 of them..

Lucky, I have 19 and had a friend download them about 6 weeks ago, maybe 
longer, because I am on dial up.

>-->
>--> We are not talking feather linux here.
>-->
>--> So I experimented with this in a number of installs.  I found that if
> you --> scanned three of the fifteen CDs it seemed to be able give you the
> option of --> installing the Desktop install and the other five or so
> installs webserver, --> print server, donut server, Ronald Reagan neocortex
> server etc, and it then --> seemed to be able to finish the rest of install
> with some bugs in the font --> installation and some other quirks but
> basically it seemed to work. -->

Depending what you want as a window manager etc.. You have to scan 10
apt-cdrom add

>--> But if you tried to only scan one disk it then omitted the Desktop
> install --> option and only presented you with a choice of the remaining
> five.  If you --> tried to install then it worked ok but of course there
> was no XWindows at --> all just the command line.
>-->
>--> I then tried instaling again and this time I made a mistake of scanning
> the --> first binary twice before the others.  Then there was a problem
> with the apt --> get installation which was fatal and it had to be
> abandoned.
>-->
>--> How many of these CDs should be scanned at this stage for index files?
>-->
>--> All fifteen?

Would be good, but at least 10
>-->
>--> I wish I had a DVD player on this machine.
>-->
>--> I installed again and scanned the first four of the CDs this time and
> then --> installed the Desktop.  My video card is an SiS 630/730 according
> to Fedora. -->   I put SiS in at what I think was the video card
> manufacturer choice --> setting in install.

What comes up as default? Try vesa?

>-->
>--> There was then some stuff about Power PCs and video card bus
> identifiers.  I --> do not know what the bus identifier is for the video
> card on this machine --> and I am not sure how to determine this.
>-->
>--> But  it seemed as though it only wanted the video bus identifier to be
>--> entered if you were using an Apple PowerPC not an ordinary PC like mine.
>-->
>--> So I left it blank.  Please let me know if I was wrong here.
>-->
>--> I got to the mouse autoconfiguration bit.  I tried this but maybe it
> didn't --> work properly.  It sounded like it thought I had a serial mouse
> but I think --> I have a 3 button PS mouse.

psaux or something like this?

>-->
>--> I think I should reinstall and then choose manual configuration of the
>--> mouse.  But maybe there is a way fire up the mouse installation routine
> from --> the command line interface in my current install which does boot
> and run (if --> you think this install is OK based on scanning only the
> first four of the 15 --> CDs for index files).

Nope. probably enough for the mouse
>-->
>--> If you could give me the CLI command for this this would be useful.
>-->
>--> I also did what I could do configure Xwindows but was not successful it
>--> seems.

as root:-
dpkg-reconfig

video cards, the mouse, Xfree86 and Debian installation.....

[Michael Fothergill]

Dear Debian folks,

I have installed Debian on my PC here.  It runs a 1200MHz Athlon CPU and has 
one 20GB disk on it with Fedora Core 5 on it and now after deleted Windows a 
second disk (primary) which is 40GB in size has now got the Desktop Debian 
installation on it.


At least I think it does.

I have a few questions about the installation process.

I spent quite a while downloading the 15 or so CD iso images from mirror 
site using wget and bittorrent (bittorrent was a waste of time - not enough 
fellow downloaders).


I then burnt them to CDs and checked them for integrity one by one with the 
Debian installer.


I installed the OS a number of times but I got problems getting the X 
windows to work.


At the moment the OS is there and boots etc but only in command line mode.

But before talking about this I have some other queries.

When I loaded up the installer it automatically found and configured mu 
cable broadband.  It looked as though it made use of this to download some 
security upgrades while installing from the CDs.


After I got through the partitioning and base install (it never has a 
problem with this) I got to the reboot and the tedious entering of passwords 
for root and the user.


I then rebooted and fired up the OS.  At this stage it tells you to put the 
first CD in.  It scans through it for what it calls index files.  It then 
comes at you with a cryptic instruction that says something like "If you 
have another CD in your install set please put it in now and get it 
scanned".  Well, I've got 15 of them..


We are not talking feather linux here.

So I experimented with this in a number of installs.  I found that if you 
scanned three of the fifteen CDs it seemed to be able give you the option of 
installing the Desktop install and the other five or so installs webserver, 
print server, donut server, Ronald Reagan neocortex server etc, and it then 
seemed to be able to finish the rest of install with some bugs in the font 
installation and some other quirks but basically it seemed to work.


But if you tried to only scan one disk it then omitted the Desktop install 
option and only presented you with a choice of the remaining five.  If you 
tried to install then it worked ok but of course there was no XWindows at 
all just the command line.


I then tried instaling again and this time I made a mistake of scanning the 
first binary twice before the others.  Then there was a problem with the apt 
get installation which was fatal and it had to be abandoned.


How many of these CDs should be scanned at this stage for index files?

All fifteen?

I wish I had a DVD player on this machine.

I installed again and scanned the first four of the CDs this time and then 
installed the Desktop.  My video card is an SiS 630/730 according to Fedora. 
 I put SiS in at what I think was the video card manufacturer choice 
setting in install.


There was then some stuff about Power PCs and video card bus identifiers.  I 
do not know what the bus identifier is for the video card on this machine 
and I am not sure how to determine this.


But  it seemed as though it only wanted the video bus identifier to be 
entered if you were using an Apple PowerPC not an ordinary PC like mine.


So I left it blank.  Please let me know if I was wrong here.

I got to the mouse autoconfiguration bit.  I tried this but maybe it didn't 
work properly.  It sounded like it thought I had a serial mouse but I think 
I have a 3 button PS mouse.


I think I should reinstall and then choose manual configuration of the 
mouse.  But maybe there is a way fire up the mouse installation routine from 
the command line interface in my current install which does boot and run (if 
you think this install is OK based on scanning only the first four of the 15 
CDs for index files).


If you could give me the CLI command for this this would be useful.

I also did what I could do configure Xwindows but was not successful it 
seems.


The monitor I use is a 15 inch CRT Belinea device.   Belinea is not a 
manufacturer that X seems to know much about.   But I have got X work OK 
with it in Fedora.


I don't know the horizontal and vertical refresh numbers for it.  But maybe 
I could use Fedora to tell me them and then put high quality information 
into Debian when configuring Xwindows for it.


Suggestions here are welcome.

When I tried startx I got a little cross and a little box in the middle of 
the screen that said things like "Xsession unable to start X no home/mikef 
.xsession file or Xsession file, no window manager, no terminal emulators 
found; aborting.


Comments welcome here.

The log messages before X tried to start contained things like"failed to 
acquire AGP,AGPdisabled, xf86 open serial cannot open device" etc


Comments welcome.

How do I run the Xwindows configuration again using the CLI in the install I 
have if it is good enough?


Do I have to reinstall again and then configure Xwindows again there to get 

Re: Supported Video Cards under Free Software

[hendrik]

On Sun, Apr 23, 2006 at 08:06:01AM +0900, Miles Bader wrote:
> "Manaen Schlabach" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> > It seems like everyone agrees that Video card manufacturers really
> > don't want to give up their 3d stuff and that seems to be the primary
> > reason we can't get a "good" open source driver.
> 
> S, sowhat exactly is in the video card drivers they're so paranoid
> about?  I know pretty well how modern graphics _hardware_ works, and
> software, but I'm not exactly sure what's in this disputed layer.
> 
> Obviously, the nuts and bolts of sending data to hardware (various
> protocols for talking to hardware), but that's fairly uninteresting, and
> it would be silly for them to feel a need to "protect" it.
> 
> So... what's the "interesting" stuff in the driver that they're trying
> to protect?  Texture management?
> 
> -Miles
> -- 
> Is it true that nothing can be known?  If so how do we know this?  -Woody 
> Allen

And they may be terrified that someone will read the open source and 
discover that they have used some uninteresting, obvious technique that 
should never have been patented, but was.  I can well imagine that 
owners of such speculative patents will spend real effort going through 
all that commercial open source code hoping for an undeserved windfall.

-- hendrik

> 
> 
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Re: Supported Video Cards under Free Software

[Miles Bader]

Christopher Nelson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>> So... what's the "interesting" stuff in the driver that they're trying
>> to protect?  Texture management?
>
> I think the 'interesting' stuff is the nuts and botls of sending data,
> because I think they're afraid someone will reverse-engineer their board
> from that info and turn around a cheaper model that does the exact same
> thing.

I'm not sure how that follows though.  There's no reason for an
erstwhile competitor to use the same hardware interface -- the very
existance of the "driver layer" means that you don't need to emulate the
hardware-level protocols to compete.

In any case, a GUI these days is an immensely complicated piece of
hardware, you can't just throw together a fly-by-night company to churn
out clones of it.  I imagine that the clues about hardware
implementation secrets given by the bit-level interface are weak at
best.  I could be wrong of course -- and that's exactly my question:
what sort of things are these drivers implementing?

What I'm thinking is that the various resource-management issues are
what's at issue here.  Texture memory management is the thing that comes
to mind, but maybe the task of juggling pipeline/threading resources is
done in the driver too?  [However if the issue were only protecting such
algorithms, then there would still be no reason to hide the hardware
interface details.]

-Miles
-- 
"Unless there are slaves to do the ugly, horrible, uninteresting work, culture
and contemplation become almost impossible. Human slavery is wrong, insecure,
and demoralizing.  On mechanical slavery, on the slavery of the machine, the
future of the world depends." -Oscar Wilde, "The Soul of Man Under Socialism"


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Re: Supported Video Cards under Free Software

[John Hasler]

Miles writes:
> So... what's the "interesting" stuff in the driver that they're trying to
> protect?  Texture management?

Several different things.  They often don't own the copyrights to
everything in the driver: they license some of it from other companies.
They also often license parts of the design of the hardware, under
astoundingly restrictive terms that might allow the licensor to revoke the
license were they to publish the interface.
-- 
John Hasler


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Re: Supported Video Cards under Free Software

[Christopher Nelson]

On Sun, Apr 23, 2006 at 08:06:01AM +0900, Miles Bader wrote:
> "Manaen Schlabach" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> > It seems like everyone agrees that Video card manufacturers really
> > don't want to give up their 3d stuff and that seems to be the primary
> > reason we can't get a "good" open source driver.
> 
> S, sowhat exactly is in the video card drivers they're so paranoid
> about?  I know pretty well how modern graphics _hardware_ works, and
> software, but I'm not exactly sure what's in this disputed layer.
> 
> Obviously, the nuts and bolts of sending data to hardware (various
> protocols for talking to hardware), but that's fairly uninteresting, and
> it would be silly for them to feel a need to "protect" it.
> 
> So... what's the "interesting" stuff in the driver that they're trying
> to protect?  Texture management?

I think the 'interesting' stuff is the nuts and botls of sending data,
because I think they're afraid someone will reverse-engineer their board
from that info and turn around a cheaper model that does the exact same
thing.

-- 
Christopher Nelson -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]
---
It is the business of the future to be dangerous.
-- Hawkwind


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Re: Supported Video Cards under Free Software

[Roberto C. Sanchez]

Miles Bader wrote:
> "Manaen Schlabach" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> 
>>It seems like everyone agrees that Video card manufacturers really
>>don't want to give up their 3d stuff and that seems to be the primary
>>reason we can't get a "good" open source driver.
> 
> 
> S, sowhat exactly is in the video card drivers they're so paranoid
> about?  I know pretty well how modern graphics _hardware_ works, and
> software, but I'm not exactly sure what's in this disputed layer.
> 
> Obviously, the nuts and bolts of sending data to hardware (various
> protocols for talking to hardware), but that's fairly uninteresting, and
> it would be silly for them to feel a need to "protect" it.
> 
> So... what's the "interesting" stuff in the driver that they're trying
> to protect?  Texture management?

AIUI, hardware manufacturers tend to work around buggy hardware in their
drivers.  If they release their code as open source or provide full
disclosure of their hardware specs, the fear that this information will
come out.  Personally, I don't see the big deal.  For every new chip,
Intel and AMD publish reams of errata and work arounds for hardware
issues.  I don't think it has hurt them much.

-Roberto

-- 
Roberto C. Sanchez
http://familiasanchez.net/~roberto


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Re: Supported Video Cards under Free Software

[Miles Bader]

"Manaen Schlabach" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> It seems like everyone agrees that Video card manufacturers really
> don't want to give up their 3d stuff and that seems to be the primary
> reason we can't get a "good" open source driver.

S, sowhat exactly is in the video card drivers they're so paranoid
about?  I know pretty well how modern graphics _hardware_ works, and
software, but I'm not exactly sure what's in this disputed layer.

Obviously, the nuts and bolts of sending data to hardware (various
protocols for talking to hardware), but that's fairly uninteresting, and
it would be silly for them to feel a need to "protect" it.

So... what's the "interesting" stuff in the driver that they're trying
to protect?  Texture management?

-Miles
-- 
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Re: Supported Video Cards under Free Software (was: Re: Best Video Card)

[Ron Johnson]

On Sat, 2006-04-22 at 12:01 -0400, Manaen Schlabach wrote:
> On 4/21/06, Ron Johnson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > On Fri, 2006-04-21 at 03:37 -0300, Rogério Brito wrote:
> > > On Apr 19 2006, Ron Johnson wrote:
[snip]
> 
> It seems like everyone agrees that Video card manufacturers really
> don't want to give up their 3d stuff and that seems to be the primary
> reason we can't get a "good" open source driver.  Ideally some video
> card manufacturer could be convinced to allow a full driver (to
> include the 3d stuff) to be written by the open source community.

Intel recently issued a press release saying they were going to do
just that.  Unfortunately, their video chips are all embedded in
their chipsets.

-- 
-
Ron Johnson, Jr.
Jefferson, LA USA

"What has a tiny brain, a big mouth, and an opinion nobody cares
about? You!"
from Murphy Brown

Re: Supported Video Cards under Free Software (was: Re: Best Video Card)

[Manaen Schlabach]

On 4/21/06, Ron Johnson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Fri, 2006-04-21 at 03:37 -0300, Rogério Brito wrote:
> > On Apr 19 2006, Ron Johnson wrote:
> > > Still, if they come out with reasonably priced cards that can do
> > > 3D like an NVIDIA FX 5200 using the nvidia binary driver, I'd
> >
> > How exactly is the performance of such a beast? I have never had the
> > opportunity of using a binary driver for video, since I don't need 3D
> > and my trusty, old Matrox card is keeping up with my necessities.
> >
> > But I'm frequently asked (by friends) to recommend hardware that would
> > run Linux well and, well, the topic of video cards is where I get most
> > undecided...
> >
> > Thanks for any experiences shared, Rogério.
>
> Back when I had an NVIDIA TNT2/M64, I installed the nvidia binary
> driver, and 3D games flew (relative to my needs, of course).  I'm
> sure that using the nvidia driver the now-equally-trailing edge FX
> 5200 would perform even better.  Obviously, the newer cards would
> perform even better.
>
> I recommend nvidia cards to anyone who wants to run Linux, because
> it have the very good 2D nv driver, and the 3D nvidia driver.  Note
> that NVIDIA has a common code-base between the Windows and Linux
> drivers, and releases a new version of it every few months.  That
> says a lot about their commitment to the Linux market.
>
> --
> -
> Ron Johnson, Jr.
> Jefferson, LA USA
>
> "Universal peace sounds ridiculous to the head of an average
> family."
> Kin Hubbard

It seems like everyone agrees that Video card manufacturers really
don't want to give up their 3d stuff and that seems to be the primary
reason we can't get a "good" open source driver.  Ideally some video
card manufacturer could be convinced to allow a full driver (to
include the 3d stuff) to be written by the open source community.

If that isn't possible couldn't there be a set of Object Oriented/open
3d standards?  You put x into the card and y will pop out.  This would
let video card manufacturers move their trade secrets onto the actual
video card chips and no one gets to see the magic of how certain
things get implemented.  They of course couldn't afford to release 3d
drivers that are nearly as buggy as the ones they release now if
corrections have to be "flashed" onto the video card.  Would something
like this be feasible or is it an unattainable dream that is beyond
technology or might require too many people to play nice together?

Re: Supported Video Cards under Free Software (was: Re: Best Video Card)

[Ron Johnson]

On Fri, 2006-04-21 at 03:37 -0300, Rogério Brito wrote: 
> On Apr 19 2006, Ron Johnson wrote:
> > Still, if they come out with reasonably priced cards that can do
> > 3D like an NVIDIA FX 5200 using the nvidia binary driver, I'd
> 
> How exactly is the performance of such a beast? I have never had the
> opportunity of using a binary driver for video, since I don't need 3D
> and my trusty, old Matrox card is keeping up with my necessities.
> 
> But I'm frequently asked (by friends) to recommend hardware that would
> run Linux well and, well, the topic of video cards is where I get most
> undecided...
> 
> Thanks for any experiences shared, Rogério.

Back when I had an NVIDIA TNT2/M64, I installed the nvidia binary
driver, and 3D games flew (relative to my needs, of course).  I'm
sure that using the nvidia driver the now-equally-trailing edge FX
5200 would perform even better.  Obviously, the newer cards would
perform even better.

I recommend nvidia cards to anyone who wants to run Linux, because
it have the very good 2D nv driver, and the 3D nvidia driver.  Note
that NVIDIA has a common code-base between the Windows and Linux
drivers, and releases a new version of it every few months.  That
says a lot about their commitment to the Linux market.

-- 
-
Ron Johnson, Jr.
Jefferson, LA USA

"Universal peace sounds ridiculous to the head of an average
family."
Kin Hubbard

Re: Supported Video Cards under Free Software (was: Re: Best Video Card)

[Paul Johnson]

On Thursday 20 April 2006 23:37, Rogério Brito wrote:
> On Apr 19 2006, Ron Johnson wrote:
> > Still, if they come out with reasonably priced cards that can do
> > 3D like an NVIDIA FX 5200 using the nvidia binary driver, I'd
>
> How exactly is the performance of such a beast? I have never had the
> opportunity of using a binary driver for video, since I don't need 3D
> and my trusty, old Matrox card is keeping up with my necessities.

30-70 fps in 1024x768, all other settings on maximum in UT2004 for Linux.

-- 
Paul Johnson
Email and IM (XMPP & Google Talk): [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Jabber: Because it's time to move forward  http://ursine.ca/Ursine:Jabber


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Re: Supported Video Cards under Free Software (was: Re: Best Video Card)

[Rogério Brito]

On Apr 19 2006, Ron Johnson wrote:
> Still, if they come out with reasonably priced cards that can do
> 3D like an NVIDIA FX 5200 using the nvidia binary driver, I'd

How exactly is the performance of such a beast? I have never had the
opportunity of using a binary driver for video, since I don't need 3D
and my trusty, old Matrox card is keeping up with my necessities.

But I'm frequently asked (by friends) to recommend hardware that would
run Linux well and, well, the topic of video cards is where I get most
undecided...


Thanks for any experiences shared, Rogério.

-- 
Rogério Brito : [EMAIL PROTECTED] : http://www.ime.usp.br/~rbrito
Homepage of the algorithms package : http://algorithms.berlios.de
Homepage on freshmeat:  http://freshmeat.net/projects/algorithms/


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Re: Supported Video Cards under Free Software (was: Re: Best Video Card)

[Rogério Brito]

On Apr 19 2006, Ron Johnson wrote:
> When Intel makes "stand-alone" video cards, they'll get more notice
> from those of us who don't want on-board video.

Actually, between the choices of being able to use the driver even if
the card is on-board or not using it (or it having poor support under
Free Operating Systems), I'd go with the former.

Oh, and before anybody jumps quickly into conclusions, I do prefer
off-board video.


-- 
Rogério Brito : [EMAIL PROTECTED] : http://www.ime.usp.br/~rbrito
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Re: Supported Video Cards under Free Software (was: Re: Best Video Card)

[Manaen Schlabach]

On 4/19/06, Ron Johnson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Wed, 2006-04-19 at 16:53 -0700, Xplicit Language wrote:
> > i have found a video driver on intel 82810 onboard video on they're
> > site at www.intel.com in the downloads and support section, i couldn't
> > get it to install since i am new to linux, but it was there.
>
> When Intel makes "stand-alone" video cards, they'll get more notice
> from those of us who don't want on-board video.
>
> --
> -
> Ron Johnson, Jr.
> Jefferson, LA USA
>
> "... going to war without France is like going deer hunting
> without an accordion. You just leave a lot of useless noisy
> baggage behind."
> Jed Babbin, former deputy undersecretary of defense in the first
> Bush administration
>
>
> --
> To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>

I didn't realize that Intel doesn't make any standalone cards that is
most unfortunate if they don't.

I was kind of amused by the comment Nvidia made in the ZDNet article
that writing a "good" video driver is very hard to do and beyond the
capabilities of a bunch of hobbyists/open source community (that's not
an exact quote).  It sounds just like something I heard in the late
90s I don't remember the quote but I think MS said something to the
effect of writing an Operating System was far too complex a task to be
done by a bunch of hobbyists and part timers

Re: Supported Video Cards under Free Software (was: Re: Best Video Card)

[Paul Johnson]

On Wednesday 19 April 2006 19:34, Ron Johnson wrote:
> On Wed, 2006-04-19 at 17:27 -0700, Paul Johnson wrote:
> > On Wednesday 19 April 2006 17:08, Ron Johnson wrote:
> > > On Wed, 2006-04-19 at 16:53 -0700, Xplicit Language wrote:
> > > > i have found a video driver on intel 82810 onboard video on they're
> > > > site at www.intel.com in the downloads and support section, i
> > > > couldn't get it to install since i am new to linux, but it was there.
> > >
> > > When Intel makes "stand-alone" video cards, they'll get more notice
> > > from those of us who don't want on-board video.
> >
> > But they do.  I distinctly remember installing about a hundred Intel
> > i880-based Intel video cards circa 1998.
>
> "Do" or "did"?  ISTR i740 cards, which flopped.

Did, and i740 sounds more familiar than 880 in retrospect.

> Still, if they come out with reasonably priced cards that can do
> 3D like an NVIDIA FX 5200 using the nvidia binary driver, I'd
> strongly think about buying one the next time I need one.

Which is why I got my hopes up when I heard that.


-- 
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Email and IM (XMPP & Google Talk): [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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Re: Supported Video Cards under Free Software (was: Re: Best Video Card)

[Ron Johnson]

On Wed, 2006-04-19 at 17:27 -0700, Paul Johnson wrote:
> On Wednesday 19 April 2006 17:08, Ron Johnson wrote:
> > On Wed, 2006-04-19 at 16:53 -0700, Xplicit Language wrote:
> > > i have found a video driver on intel 82810 onboard video on they're
> > > site at www.intel.com in the downloads and support section, i couldn't
> > > get it to install since i am new to linux, but it was there.
> >
> > When Intel makes "stand-alone" video cards, they'll get more notice
> > from those of us who don't want on-board video.
> 
> But they do.  I distinctly remember installing about a hundred Intel 
> i880-based Intel video cards circa 1998.

"Do" or "did"?  ISTR i740 cards, which flopped.

Still, if they come out with reasonably priced cards that can do
3D like an NVIDIA FX 5200 using the nvidia binary driver, I'd
strongly think about buying one the next time I need one.

-- 
-
Ron Johnson, Jr.
Jefferson, LA USA

"Though force can protect in emergency, only justice, fairness,
consideration and cooperation can finally lead men to the dawn of
eternal peace."
Dwight D Eisenhower


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Re: Supported Video Cards under Free Software (was: Re: Best Video Card)

[Paul Johnson]

On Wednesday 19 April 2006 17:08, Ron Johnson wrote:
> On Wed, 2006-04-19 at 16:53 -0700, Xplicit Language wrote:
> > i have found a video driver on intel 82810 onboard video on they're
> > site at www.intel.com in the downloads and support section, i couldn't
> > get it to install since i am new to linux, but it was there.
>
> When Intel makes "stand-alone" video cards, they'll get more notice
> from those of us who don't want on-board video.

But they do.  I distinctly remember installing about a hundred Intel 
i880-based Intel video cards circa 1998.

-- 
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Email and IM (XMPP & Google Talk): [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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Re: Supported Video Cards under Free Software (was: Re: Best Video Card)

[Xplicit Language]

right i see what you meanRon Johnson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:  On Wed, 2006-04-19 at 16:53 -0700, Xplicit Language wrote:> i have found a video driver on intel 82810 onboard video on they're> site at www.intel.com in the downloads and support section, i couldn't> get it to install since i am new to linux, but it was there.When Intel makes "stand-alone" video cards, they'll get more noticefrom those of us who don't want on-board video.-- -Ron Johnson, Jr.Jefferson, LA USA"... going to war without France is like going deer huntingwithout an accordion. You just leave a lot of useless noisybaggage behind."Jed Babbin, former deputy undersecretary of defense in the firstBush administration--
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Re: Supported Video Cards under Free Software (was: Re: Best Video Card)

[Ron Johnson]

On Wed, 2006-04-19 at 16:53 -0700, Xplicit Language wrote:
> i have found a video driver on intel 82810 onboard video on they're
> site at www.intel.com in the downloads and support section, i couldn't
> get it to install since i am new to linux, but it was there.

When Intel makes "stand-alone" video cards, they'll get more notice
from those of us who don't want on-board video.

-- 
-
Ron Johnson, Jr.
Jefferson, LA USA

"... going to war without France is like going deer hunting
without an accordion. You just leave a lot of useless noisy
baggage behind."
Jed Babbin, former deputy undersecretary of defense in the first
Bush administration


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Re: Supported Video Cards under Free Software (was: Re: Best Video Card)

[Xplicit Language]

i have found a video driver on intel 82810 onboard video on they're site at www.intel.com in the downloads and support section, i couldn't get it to install since i am new to linux, but it was there.Rogério Brito <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:   Hi, Manaen and others interested in Freedom.On Apr 18 2006, Manaen Schlabach wrote:> From a recent ZDNet article> > http://news.com.com/2102-7344_3-6061491.html?tag=st.util.printYes, I read this very same article with great interest (and what a goodtiming it had, considering our discussion here) and was pleased by whatI read.> I personally value my computing freedoms and believe in what Debian> and the FSF stand for so it looks like Intel will be getting a wad of> my hard earned cash in the near
 future.The very same here. I don't want to ge tied to a given operating systemand I would like to be able to use my hardware with other systems like,say, OpenBSD (which I have not experienced before).And, for this reason, having a big company like Intel backing thedevelopment of drivers (which, after released, would be "imported" byother projects) is indeed a nice thing that is able to guide my buyingdecisions (and even what I recommend to the Universities where I work,so that I can actually teach the use of Free Tools for students).Regards, Rogério Brito.-- Rogério Brito : [EMAIL PROTECTED] : http://www.ime.usp.br/~rbritoHomepage of the algorithms package : http://algorithms.berlios.deHomepage on freshmeat: http://freshmeat.net/projects/algorithms/-- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact
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Re: Supported Video Cards under Free Software (was: Re: Best Video Card)

[Xplicit Language]

Rogério Brito <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:  Hi, Manaen and others interested in Freedom.On Apr 18 2006, Manaen Schlabach wrote:> From a recent ZDNet article> > http://news.com.com/2102-7344_3-6061491.html?tag=st.util.printYes, I read this very same article with great interest (and what a goodtiming it had, considering our discussion here) and was pleased by whatI read.> I personally value my computing freedoms and believe in what Debian> and the FSF stand for so it looks like Intel will be getting a wad of> my hard earned cash in the near future.The very same here. I don't want to ge tied to a given operating systemand I would like to be able to use my hardware with other systems like,say, OpenBSD (which I have not experienced before).And, for this
 reason, having a big company like Intel backing thedevelopment of drivers (which, after released, would be "imported" byother projects) is indeed a nice thing that is able to guide my buyingdecisions (and even what I recommend to the Universities where I work,so that I can actually teach the use of Free Tools for students).Regards, Rogério Brito.-- Rogério Brito : [EMAIL PROTECTED] : http://www.ime.usp.br/~rbritoHomepage of the algorithms package : http://algorithms.berlios.deHomepage on freshmeat: http://freshmeat.net/projects/algorithms/-- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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Supported Video Cards under Free Software (was: Re: Best Video Card)

[Rogério Brito]

Hi, Manaen and others interested in Freedom.

On Apr 18 2006, Manaen Schlabach wrote:
> From a recent ZDNet article
> 
> http://news.com.com/2102-7344_3-6061491.html?tag=st.util.print

Yes, I read this very same article with great interest (and what a good
timing it had, considering our discussion here) and was pleased by what
I read.

> I personally value my computing freedoms and believe in what Debian
> and the FSF stand for so it looks like Intel will be getting a wad of
> my hard earned cash in the near future.

The very same here. I don't want to ge tied to a given operating system
and I would like to be able to use my hardware with other systems like,
say, OpenBSD (which I have not experienced before).

And, for this reason, having a big company like Intel backing the
development of drivers (which, after released, would be "imported" by
other projects) is indeed a nice thing that is able to guide my buying
decisions (and even what I recommend to the Universities where I work,
so that I can actually teach the use of Free Tools for students).


Regards, Rogério Brito.

-- 
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Homepage of the algorithms package : http://algorithms.berlios.de
Homepage on freshmeat:  http://freshmeat.net/projects/algorithms/


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Backstreet ruby and video cards

[R.Karthick]

Hi!!!

I am planning to use backstreet ruby to run a multi-headed PC.

I already have a system (i810) with inbuilt agp card. Its X is setup
correctly and its currently running Debian woody with FVWM window
manager. I am planning to buy another PCI VGA card. What type will you
recommend,which is economical and at the same time suits this purpose.

And I am just curious to know, how much time will it take at an
average to setup everything.

Regards,
R Karthick

--
You are the one, the only one


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two video cards

[Paul Brossier]

Hi all.

I have a strange problem with my machine. I have an old 4megs agp card and a
pci voodoo 3dfx. I can set X to boot on my pci with no problem at all,
by specifying in XFConfig-4

Section "Device"
Identifier  "Voodoo3"
VendorName  "3dfx"
Driver  "tdfx"
BusID   "PCI:0:10:0"
EndSection

I guess i can also have two screen running, but for now I would like to be 
able to remove my old agp card, and get my tty working ! 

If i boot without the agp, lilo come back to the menu right after the Bios 
check (2 lines output). Changing my bios to boot the pci video card first, it 
does not seem to have any effect. I even tried booting from a debian 
netinstall cd (2.4.18 xfs), but lilo behave in the same way. 

So I can boot with both, but not with pci first, otherwise lilo crashes. ttys 
start on the agp screen, then disappear while X is being started on the pci 
one. If i try switching to any of them, my keyboard and my pci screen freeze 
(sometimes with a crazy blinking tty, sometimes with a colorful still X arty 
picture). When i switch x off, it seems the ttys come back in place on the 
agp screen.

Any idea ? 

Thanx, piem.


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Re: nvidia video cards

[Emma Jane Hogbin]

> Anyone offer a tip?

I just re-installed my entire system. From a single-CD rescue disk.
Everything was done by hand, except for a few config files that I had
stashed away. Hopefully this means I have everything in my notes that
you'll need to get nvidia working. Note: I'm on a laptop and probably not
using the exact same card as yours, but it should be close enough.

apt-get install nvidia-kernel-src
apt-get install nvidia-glx-src

check /usr/share/doc for install information
remove any old drivers from /lib/modules

check for required packages. This list may include:
xlibmesa3-glu   (unstable)
xlibmesa3-gl-dev(unstable)
xlibmesa-dev(stable)
wget(all)

unpack: 1) nvidia-kernel-src (2) nvidia-glx-src
check in directories made to see that the versions are the same. This is
important!

cd /usr/src/nvidia-glx
dpkg-buildpackage -us -uc

cd /usr/src/linux
make-kpkg modules_image
You don't have to do it this way, but it will make your life
easier for now. Not to mention I don't have instructions on how to
do it without using The Debian Way.

cd /usr/src
dpkg -i nvidia*deb
You'll have to deal with error screens about the package numbers
not matching your kernel numbers. For the graphics cards you can
ignore these errors and tell the prompt that you know what you're
doing and to proceed with the installation.

If at this point you haven't been prompted to configure your screen,
reconfigure the packages. I think it's dpkg-reconfigure the "glx" package,
but I can't remember. Play around with them. One of them will give you the
standard gray and blue and yellow screen where you pick your defaults. I
could not get my config file settings right by using the debian configure
package. So I grab an old copy of my config file. My computer is a laptop,
however, if you'd like a copy of my config file, it's available here:
http://xtrinsic.com/geek/code/XF86Config-4.txt

Read /usr/share/doc to see what the name of the driver is for your
packages. This is IMPORTANT! For me it says:
edit /etc/X11/XF86Config-4
Load "glx"
Load "GLCore"
*remove* "dri"
change the driver to "nvidia" (not nv and not NVdriver)
This has *not* been the same for each of the different versions of the
packages I've used. Make sure you see what you're supposed to do for your
packages. (You're only getting the config file stuff from the READMEs.
Copy it down so you don't have to keep flipping back to these files.)

reboot

I have to load the driver by hand each time I've messed about with the
kernel. Then I don't have to do it again until the next time I mess about
with the kernel. You can check with "lsmod" to see if it's loaded. You're
looking for "NVdriver" (which is not the same name as in the config file,
which is ok). If it's not listed then you'll need to load it by hand like
I do:
insmod NVdriver
(note the caps)

After that you should be able to startx. I used to think that installing
the graphics card was completely impossible. It's actually not that bad as
long as you read everything first.

emma

-- 
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[[ 416 417 2868 ][ www.xtrinsic.com ]]


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Re: nvidia video cards

[Kevin McKinley]

On Mon, 2 Jun 2003 12:13:10 -0600
"Jamin W. Collins" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> > The 4191 version caused problems for everybody. I don't know anyone
> > who was able to make it work in Debian, Mandrake or RedHat.
> 
> Worked fine here.  Though it didn't support Dual Head on my chipset at
> the time, it did support TwinView and I used it until they released 4349
> (which is now installed, and supports Dual Head).

Good to know it worked for somebody; you're the first I've heard of.
 
> > So here's the question -- how many different ways do I need to tell
> > the system to keepen its little mittens offen those packages? Can you
> > suggest another/better way to accomplish this?
> 
> Are you putting the compiled binary packages on hold or the src
> packages?  I believe you'll need to put the src packages on hold to
> accomplish what your after.

I was putting the source packages on hold. There aren't any compiled binary
packages in the Debian archive to cause unwanted upgrades. :)

Kevin


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Re: nvidia video cards

[Jeffrey L. Taylor]

Quoting Ron Johnson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> On Mon, 2003-06-02 at 08:45, Jeffrey L. Taylor wrote:
> > Quoting Kevin McKinley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> > > So here's the question -- how many different ways do I need to tell the
> > > system to keepen its little mittens offen those packages? Can you suggest
> > > another/better way to accomplish this?
> > > 
> > 
> > Don't mix dselect/apt-get and aptitude.  Stick to one or the other.
> > As you have found, it is a mess to switch between the two.
> 
> Do they keep their "information" repositories in different areas,
> or is it just confusing to switch between them?
> 

>From the docs, at least some of it is the same.  From rumors/postings,
they compute dependencies and/or priorities differently.  I have a
laptop with mostly testing and a few unstable packages.  I switched it
from aptitude to apt-get.  And the desktop with stable (AKA woody) was
switched from apt-get to aptitude.

Whey I switched from one to the other, all of a sudden, they started
replacing packages right and left.  It took several iterations of
install and judious use of --force and some cross your fingers and
allow deletion hoping all will be well eventually.

Jeffrey


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Re: nvidia video cards

[Jamin W. Collins]

On Mon, Jun 02, 2003 at 04:06:59AM -0400, Kevin McKinley wrote:

> The 4191 version caused problems for everybody. I don't know anyone
> who was able to make it work in Debian, Mandrake or RedHat.

Worked fine here.  Though it didn't support Dual Head on my chipset at
the time, it did support TwinView and I used it until they released 4349
(which is now installed, and supports Dual Head).

> So here's the question -- how many different ways do I need to tell
> the system to keepen its little mittens offen those packages? Can you
> suggest another/better way to accomplish this?

Are you putting the compiled binary packages on hold or the src
packages?  I believe you'll need to put the src packages on hold to
accomplish what your after.

-- 
Jamin W. Collins

Remember, root always has a loaded gun.  Don't run around with it unless
you absolutely need it. -- Vineet Kumar


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Re: nvidia video cards

[Ron Johnson]

On Mon, 2003-06-02 at 08:45, Jeffrey L. Taylor wrote:
> Quoting Kevin McKinley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> > So here's the question -- how many different ways do I need to tell the
> > system to keepen its little mittens offen those packages? Can you suggest
> > another/better way to accomplish this?
> > 
> 
> Don't mix dselect/apt-get and aptitude.  Stick to one or the other.
> As you have found, it is a mess to switch between the two.

Do they keep their "information" repositories in different areas,
or is it just confusing to switch between them?

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Re: nvidia video cards

[Jeffrey L. Taylor]

Quoting Kevin McKinley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> So here's the question -- how many different ways do I need to tell the
> system to keepen its little mittens offen those packages? Can you suggest
> another/better way to accomplish this?
> 

Don't mix dselect/apt-get and aptitude.  Stick to one or the other.
As you have found, it is a mess to switch between the two.

Jeffrey


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Re: nvidia video cards

[Kevin McKinley]

On Sun, 1 Jun 2003 20:15:08 -0600
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Bob Proulx) wrote:

> > When you install the Debian nvidia packages, the tarballs are put in
> > /usr/src.
> 
> Only if you don't care which version you get.  See in my message my
> description of problems with the current version at the time of my
> last installation.  There does not seem to be any other way of
> specifying a specific older version such as I have done here unless
> you wget them first.  Therefore I had to wget 2880 in order to specify
> that version which was a known working one for me.
> 
> And I dug up the details on which version was really bad for me.  The
> nVidia version 4191 was the driver version that caused me all kinds of
> trouble from a few months ago.  It had display corruption problems.
> Reverting to the older known good version fixed the problem.  Since
> the current version is now 4363 which is several builds beyond the one
> giving me fits I will assume they have likely fixed that problem.  So
> the current one is probably going to be just fine for people.

Good point; thanks for that.

I discovered that the stable nvidia packages include the 2880 driver and
that's the version that works for me.

I also discovered (as you have) that the testing/sid packages have different
versions of the NVIDIA tarballs from one download to the next. My solution
was to squirrel away copies of the stable packages (outside my archive),
just in case the maintainer decides to change those too.

The 4191 version caused problems for everybody. I don't know anyone who was
able to make it work in Debian, Mandrake or RedHat.

Perhaps you can help with a related matter. I started aptitude and put holds
on both the kernel and glx packages, but when I did apt-get dist-upgrade
they were replaced. Fine. Once I got that unsnarled I went into dselect and
put holds on the packages there and the problem went away.

This morning I started aptitude and told it to upgrade, and it replaced both
packages (along with a lot of other stuff I hadn't planned on upgrading).
Sheesh. So I purged/reinstalled again, and again put holds on the packages
in aptitude.

So here's the question -- how many different ways do I need to tell the
system to keepen its little mittens offen those packages? Can you suggest
another/better way to accomplish this?

Kevin


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Re: nvidia video cards

[Bob Proulx]

Kevin McKinley wrote:
> Bob Proulx wrote:
> >   wget http://205.158.109.140/XFree86_40/1.0-2880/NVIDIA_kernel-1.0-2880.tar.gz
> >   wget http://205.158.109.140/XFree86_40/1.0-2880/NVIDIA_GLX-1.0-2880.tar.gz
> wgetting the tarballs is no longer necessary; NVIDIA now allows them to be
> distributed.
> When you install the Debian nvidia packages, the tarballs are put in
> /usr/src.

Only if you don't care which version you get.  See in my message my
description of problems with the current version at the time of my
last installation.  There does not seem to be any other way of
specifying a specific older version such as I have done here unless
you wget them first.  Therefore I had to wget 2880 in order to specify
that version which was a known working one for me.

And I dug up the details on which version was really bad for me.  The
nVidia version 4191 was the driver version that caused me all kinds of
trouble from a few months ago.  It had display corruption problems.
Reverting to the older known good version fixed the problem.  Since
the current version is now 4363 which is several builds beyond the one
giving me fits I will assume they have likely fixed that problem.  So
the current one is probably going to be just fine for people.

TTFN,
Bob


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Re: nvidia video cards

[Kevin McKinley]

On Sun, 1 Jun 2003 13:07:29 -0600
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Bob Proulx) wrote:

> Get the bits onto your machine:
>   cd /usr/src
>   wget
>   http://205.158.109.140/XFree86_40/1.0-2880/NVIDIA_kernel-1.0-2880.tar.gz
>   wget
>   http://205.158.109.140/XFree86_40/1.0-2880/NVIDIA_GLX-1.0-2880.tar.gz
>   sudo apt-get install nvidia-kernel-src nvidia-glx-src

wgetting the tarballs is no longer necessary; NVIDIA now allows them to be
distributed.

When you install the Debian nvidia packages, the tarballs are put in
/usr/src.

Once you are happy with your setup, I recommend going into both dselect and
aptitude, and putting a hold on both nvidia packages. Otherwise they are
automatically upgraded, and (for me anyway) that's not a good thing.

Kevin


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Re: nvidia video cards

[Dan Hunt]

On Sun, Jun 01, 2003 at 01:07:29PM -0600, Bob Proulx wrote:
> Hope this helps,
> Bob
Thanks Bob, I appreciate the help, I will give it a whirl.
Kind Regards
Dan Hunt


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Re: nvidia video cards

[Bob Proulx]

Dan Hunt wrote:
> I went "apt-get install nvidia-kernel-src" and 
>"apt-get install nvidia-glx-src"
> and I found the instructions a bit confusing,
> /usr/doc/nvidia-kernel-src/README.Debian
> 
> cd linux ( or your kernel source directory )
>  
>  O.K. I have a stock kernel installed 
>  2.4.18-bf2.4 and I installed the kernel-headers package, but 
>  I think I needed to get something else instead.
> 
> Anyone offer a tip?

First off, I have never personally been successful getting the
proprietary nvidia driver working with a kernel that I did not compile
myself.  But it always worked flawlessly with kernels that I did
compile myself.  I have been guessing that it is something related to
needing to compile the kernel and the modules with the same compiler.
When I use bf24 kernel the nvidia module won't load.  I have been
using the stock woody compiler.  Seeing that you are running the
bootstrapping bf24 kernel I might guess that this is going to be a
problem for you.  But perhaps not as it might just be a local issue on
my end.  YMMV.  Heads up.

Otherwise, if you can stand my terse shorthand notation, here are the
exact steps that I have used in the past to install the nvidia
driver.

Note that I am using version 2880 because as of the last time I
checked the newer driver still had some bugs and screen artifacts but
the 2880 version seemed to work fine.  My problems were severe and
strange screen artifacts, menus still there even when not, pixels
patterns on the root screen, that type of thing and was almost
certainly related to the particular vidio card I am using.  I have
forgotten the exact version numbers that did not work for me.  Sorry
for the FUD because of that.  In the meantime I will just note that a
version sensitivity issue might exist.

Note that I normally do all work in /usr/src as myself as much as
possible.  I am in group 'src' and have write access to /usr/src as
myself.  I only use root for the steps that absolutely require it.
For those steps I use 'sudo'.  I use 'fakeroot' when possible for
building packages.

Get the bits onto your machine:
  cd /usr/src
  wget http://205.158.109.140/XFree86_40/1.0-2880/NVIDIA_kernel-1.0-2880.tar.gz
  wget http://205.158.109.140/XFree86_40/1.0-2880/NVIDIA_GLX-1.0-2880.tar.gz
  sudo apt-get install nvidia-kernel-src nvidia-glx-src

Build the kernel modules:
  cd /usr/src
  tar xzf nvidia-kernel-src.tar.gz
  cd kernel-source-2.4.18
  make-kpkg modules_image
  cd /usr/src
  dpkg -i nvidia-kernel-*.deb

Build the graphics drivers:
  cd /usr/src/nvidia-glx-1.0.2880
  fakeroot dpkg-buildpackage -us -uc
  cd /usr/src
  dpkg -i nvidia-glx*.deb

Configure X for this driver:
  ... edit /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 ...
  Driver  "nvidia"
  Option  "UseFBDev"  "true"
  Option  "NoLogo""true"

Hope this helps,
Bob


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Description: PGP signature

Re: nvidia video cards

[Dan Hunt]

> Go to the NVIDIA web site and download their drivers, or get the packages
> nvidia-kernel-src and nvidia-glx-src from Debian.
> 
> Follow the instructions.
> 
I went "apt-get install nvidia-kernel-src" and 
   "apt-get install nvidia-glx-src"
and I found the instructions a bit confusing,
/usr/doc/nvidia-kernel-src/README.Debian

cd linux ( or your kernel source directory )
 
 O.K. I have a stock kernel installed 
 2.4.18-bf2.4 and I installed the kernel-headers package, but 
 I think I needed to get something else instead.

Anyone offer a tip?



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Re: tuxracer: extension "GLX" missing (was: nvidia video cards)

[Kevin McKinley]

On Sat, 31 May 2003 21:23:19 -0600
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Bob Proulx) wrote:

>From the utah-glx FAQ:

"GLX is basically the glue that ties OpenGL and X together. Most of the code
in Utah-GLX is actually dealing with graphics chipset specific drivers code.
Most of the OpenGL support is provided by Mesa (which has
hardware-acceleration hooks that we update)."

"The GLX protocol is a way to send 3D graphics commands over an X
client-server connection. It was created by Silicon Graphics and recently
released as open source. In order to distinguish this package from SGI's GLX
module we opted to refer to this project as Utah GLX."

I believe you're confusing GLX and framebuffer.

Tuxracer requires GLX, which is provided for GeForce? by NVIDIA.

Framebuffer is a completely different animal, though since X is hardly my
strong suite I won't say any more (except to note that I use the proprietary
NVIDIA drivers for X and VESA framebuffer for the console, so I know they
don't conflict).

Kevin


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Re: nvidia video cards

[Kevin McKinley]

On Sat, 31 May 2003 18:41:45 -0300
james leclair <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> 
> Setting up woody on my main box. Using geforce4 mx pci video card. After 
> installing x and running starx, I get error messages stating "no screens 
> found". When installing x, I had chose the nv server. Was this correct?
> Had good experiences on my test comp with Debian and would really love to
> get it up on my main box. Anyone have any suggestions?

Go to the NVIDIA web site and download their drivers, or get the packages
nvidia-kernel-src and nvidia-glx-src from Debian.

Follow the instructions.

Kevin


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tuxracer: extension "GLX" missing (was: nvidia video cards)

[Bob Proulx]

[Drifting from original topic and on to tuxracer problems...]

Ron Johnson wrote:
> Bob Proulx wrote:
> > The framebuffer is needed for some programs, notably tuxracer, which
> > use it and you won't be able to run those programs without it.  Darn!
> 
> Are you sure?  I'm running XFree 4.2.1 with the binary driver
> and tuxracer runs great in non-FB mode.

Hmm...  Well, if it works for you in non-framebuffer mode then I guess
I can't be sure!  :-)  Perhaps it was something else for me then but I
had thought that was it.  Thanks for the correction.

I just tried to reproduce my previous problem and at this time I see
this error which looks like a completely different problem at this
time.

Xlib:  extension "GLX" missing on display ":0.0".
Xlib:  extension "GLX" missing on display ":0.0".
*** tuxracer error: Couldn't initialize video: Couldn't find matching GLX visual 
(Success)

I have this in /etc/X11/XF86Config-4.

Load"glx" # OpenGL X protocol interface

My xfree logfile shows:

(II) LoadModule: "glx"
(II) Loading /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/extensions/libglx.so
dlopen: libGLcore.so.1: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
(EE) Failed to load /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/extensions/libglx.so
(II) UnloadModule: "glx"
(EE) Failed to load module "glx" (loader failed, 136243544)

Hmm...  I could not deduce a package that contained that file, other
than the proprietary 'nvidia-glx'.  (Wondering if there is a diversion
conflict with the nvidia driver.  But I can't see any.)

Any ideas for me?

Thanks
Bob


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Re: nvidia video cards

[Ron Johnson]

On Sat, 2003-05-31 at 19:34, Bob Proulx wrote:
> james leclair wrote:
[snip]
> The "nv" driver does not support framebuffer.  But if you were like me
> that option pulled you in.  Find this in your /etc/X11/XF86Config-4
> file and comment it out.
> 
>   Option  "UseFBDev"  "true"
> 
> The framebuffer is needed for some programs, notably tuxracer, which
> use it and you won't be able to run those programs without it.  Darn!
> But at least you will have X running.

Are you sure?  I'm running XFree 4.2.1 with the binary driver
and tuxracer runs great in non-FB mode.

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Re: nvidia video cards

[Bob Proulx]

james leclair wrote:
> 
> Setting up woody on my main box. Using geforce4 mx pci video card. After 
> installing x and running starx, I get error messages stating "no screens 
> found". When installing x, I had chose the nv server. Was this correct? Had 
> good experiences on my test comp with Debian and would really love to get 
> it up on my main box. Anyone have any suggestions?

The "nv" driver does not support framebuffer.  But if you were like me
that option pulled you in.  Find this in your /etc/X11/XF86Config-4
file and comment it out.

  Option  "UseFBDev"  "true"

The framebuffer is needed for some programs, notably tuxracer, which
use it and you won't be able to run those programs without it.  Darn!
But at least you will have X running.

Bob


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Re: nvidia video cards

[Haim Ashkenazi]

On Sat, 31 May 2003 18:41:45 -0300
james leclair <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> 
> Setting up woody on my main box. Using geforce4 mx pci video card.
> After installing x and running starx, I get error messages stating "no
> screens found". When installing x, I had chose the nv server. Was this
> correct? Had good experiences on my test comp with Debian and would
> really love to get it up on my main box. Anyone have any suggestions?
> James
Hi

If I remember correctly you have to disable some option in
'/etc/X11/XFree86-4'. I think it's something about framebuffer but I
really don't remember. just play with the options.

hope it helps

> 
> 
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> 


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nvidia video cards

[james leclair]

Setting up woody on my main box. Using geforce4 mx pci video card. After 
installing x and running starx, I get error messages stating "no screens 
found". When installing x, I had chose the nv server. Was this correct? Had 
good experiences on my test comp with Debian and would really love to get 
it up on my main box. Anyone have any suggestions?
James

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Re: Looking for input on video cards - ATI? AllInWonder? NVidia GForce2/3/4?

[nate]

Hanasaki JiJi said:

> Any thoughts on this board? or suggestions to something similar?
> http://www.leadtek.com/graphics/a250td/a250td.htm

to get best performance your gonna need the 3rd party closed source
drivers in either ATI or nvidia's case. I personally use nvidia, only
have 1 system with an nvidia card, it's a geforce3 4200 or something,
128MB of ram. VGA & DVI output. that winfast card looks similar cept
it has tv out. TV out should work fine on the nvidia cards though
I've never tried it(my TV is 16 years old and doesn't display computer
stuff very well, though I do have a dreamcast and have run linux on it with
output to TV). That card doesn't look like it supports Twinview("real"
dual head). So if you want dual head with different data on either screen
(rather then 2 screens showing exactly the same thing). You'll need a differnet
card.

I use Hauppauge WinTV PCI boards for TV-in, but as above, I've never
used TV-out. Hauppauge boards are cheap($50), and the drivers are
outstanding, I have one machine that sits as a TV 24/7 and until today it
had an uptime
of 635 days, had to shut it down due to a 10 hour power outage, sigh.

nate




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Looking for input on video cards - ATI? AllInWonder? NVidia GForce2/3/4?

[Hanasaki JiJi]

Hello all,

I am seeking your input on video cards.  The goal is to upgrade from the 
current voodoo3500tv

What is the minium chipset in NVidia/ATI that has slightly more power 
than the voodoo3500tv?

Which AllInWonder's are supported by Woody?

Which NVidia chips are supported by Woody?

Any thoughts on this board? or suggestions to something similar?
http://www.leadtek.com/graphics/a250td/a250td.htm

The goal is to make a full Audio/Visual system.

Thanks.


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Re: Debian support of ATI video cards

[Haralambos Geortgilakis]

Hi All & James,

who inquires after ATI drivers & Debian Tux.

I have a Radeon 9000 Por & I am running it via the dri-sourceforge 
stuff. Tiz nice.

I used Synaptic to do the dirty work & it is a honey of an app. Well 
done to the geeks that put that beastie together.

There are "official" ATI drivers for this card too.

I am but a geek of not great skills & have been unable to install them 
on this boxen. I tried the alien thang, but then I get a bunch of other 
errors. The updated 2.5.1 getz me further than the 2.4.3, but not all up 
& running.

The "official" drivers support 8500/9000/9500/9700 in all there various 
flavours.

Hereabouts is a useful site, that has a forum for ATI & Tuxian's

http://www.rage3d.com/board/forumdisplay.php?s=a70fd4e81874761b0f54b36d5678adb8&forumid=61

I use it too.

This week my focus has been else where, so I am staying put since I have 
ok 2D support, but not the 2D/3D quality I get in DozeXP.

Next week, we will see.

Good luck dude.

Greek Geek :-)


"You've got an anti-anti-antimissile missile? Well, we've got an 
anti-anti-anti-antimissile missile!" -Get Smart


James R. Van Zandt wrote:


I'm trying to decide what video card to get in my next computer.

ATI summarizes their Linux support here:
 http://mirror.ati.com/support/faq/linux.html

They say they have a driver with 2D acceleration only for:

RADEON 9700 
RADEON 9000 
RADEON 8500 
FireGL Workstation products

but that XFree86 already supports "most ATI graphics adapters".  The
XFree86 site (http://www.xfree86.org/4.2.1/Status6.html#6) says
"Accelerated support is provided for Mach64, Rage, Rage 128 and Radeon
chips by the "ati" driver" but they don't specify 2D or 3D
acceleration.  I guess this code is in
xserver-xfree86_4.2.1-4_i386.deb?


For 3D acceleration:

At their web site (http://mirror.ati.com/support/driver.html) ATI
offers an RPM file (fglrx-glc22-4.2.0-2.5.1.i586.rpm) with a driver
supporting these cards under XFree86 4.2.0:

RADEON 9700
RADEON 9000
RADEON 8500

Can that RPM be installed in a Debian system with alien?
Is there a Debian package?  (I couldn't find one.)
If not, do the files from the RPM overlap those from 
the xserver-xfree86 package?  Other packages?

ATI points to the DRI project (http://dri.sourceforge.net/)
for drivers to support:
RADEON
RAGE 128
RAGE PRO
with Debian packages at http://people.debian.org/~daenzer/dri-trunk/

However, the Rage PRO at least is apparently five years old.  In a 1998
review Tom's Hardware says
(http://www17.tomshardware.com/graphic/98q1/980121/3dbench-37.html):

 "So what's with the ATI Rage Pro chip? I can't help it, but this chip
 lacks in too many cases to be worth a recommendation.  It does not
 support GLQuake's or Quake II's OpenGL engine, it has obvious problems
 with Direct3D, it has got only very weak support of professional
 OpenGL under NT, so that it doesn't leave much else than its excellent
 2D performance in combination with its video in/out features."

Hardly a glowing recommendation.

Do the Debian packages of the DRI software have any support for the
newer adaptors?


Maybe I should get an NVidea card after all.  I understand there are
no open-source accelerated drivers, but there are binary drivers, and
I see we have these packages:

nvidia-glx-src - NVIDIA binary XFree86 4.x driver
nvidia-kernel-src - NVIDIA binary kernel module


		- Jim Van Zandt


 




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