Re: [gentoo-user] Xserver on Dell Inspiron M1710
Hi all, Well, I'm almost there, but still need some guidance. Colleen said the screen was garbled - doesn't seem to be an out of range problem. Probably it would be best if Colleen attached or linked to Xorg.0.log and xorg.conf and maybe kernel output [if that kernel recompilation didn't fix the problems of course]. Okay, the installation of kde went fine. However, when I'm presented with the login screen for my user id, I get the message: Could not start kstartupconfig. Check your installation. I'm not sure why this is happening. Before adding xdm to the default runlevel, if I typed 'startx' as the root user, kde started up fine and started the wizard to configure kde. I don't know if it's relevant, but my home directory is on another partition, but the passwd file looks okay in this regard. However, if I exit the xsession - i.e. at the kde login screen select console login or do Ctrl-Alt-Backspace to kill the xsession, the text is still all garbled. Any ideas? Regards, Colleen -- Registered Linux User #411143 with the Linux Counter, http://counter.li.org -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Xserver on Dell Inspiron M1710
On Sat, 05 May 2007 03:24:55 -0400, Colleen Beamer wrote: Okay, the installation of kde went fine. However, when I'm presented with the login screen for my user id, I get the message: Could not start kstartupconfig. Check your installation. I've seen this caused by permissions. Make sure everything in ~/.kde3.5 is owned by the user chown -R user: ~user/.kde3.5 or even chown -R user: ~user -- Neil Bothwick Boss spelled backwards is double-SOB signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Xserver on Dell Inspiron M1710
At Fri, 04 May 2007 12:03:12 -0400 Colleen Beamer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I've always used ATI cards and after this experience, I think I still prefer them. I understand your frustration and going back to ATI in the future is certainly an option. I should add however that there have been quite a number of reports to this mailing list documenting frustration with ATI (I have never had ATI myself). My own very unscientific summary of the situation is that ATI has been less favorably reviewed then nvidia. Another view expressed is essentially a pox on both your houses, proprietary drivers are problematic by nature. good luck. allan -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Xserver on Dell Inspiron M1710
On Saturday 05 May 2007 19:49:11 Allan Gottlieb wrote: I've always used ATI cards and after this experience, I think I still prefer them. [...] My own very unscientific summary of the situation is that ATI has been less favorably reviewed then nvidia. [...] One could say that the open source drivers for ati cards are considerably better than the open source drivers for nvidia *because* the proprietary ati drivers are so horrible compared to the proprietary drivers from nvidia... :) -- Bo Andresen signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: [gentoo-user] Xserver on Dell Inspiron M1710
Neil Bothwick wrote: On Sat, 05 May 2007 03:24:55 -0400, Colleen Beamer wrote: Okay, the installation of kde went fine. However, when I'm presented with the login screen for my user id, I get the message: Could not start kstartupconfig. Check your installation. I've seen this caused by permissions. Make sure everything in ~/.kde3.5 is owned by the user Thanks for the tip - another one from the list that I'll file away for future reference. :-) This worked, but the problem was actually my /home/colleen directory. /home is on a separate partition and I actually had to create the colleen directory, which I did as root and ergo, it was owned by root. All is cool now! Regards, Colleen -- Registered Linux User #411143 with the Linux Counter, http://counter.li.org -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Xserver on Dell Inspiron M1710
Hi, On Fri, 04 May 2007 08:48:20 -0400 Colleen Beamer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: What happens when you; emerge -pv xorg-x11 What do you mean, What happens? It emerges, no error messages. Well, with the -p flag it should just pretend to. And show the effective USE flags, which might be interesting for us to see in order to match them with your statement that you have correctly configured them. But then, I don't think this won't lead us to the problem's core, either, and would rather suggest that you extract the relevant lines from /var/log/Xorg.0.log, i.e. those showing the _exact_ warning and error messages regarding mouse/keyboard and stuff. Or did you just mess up your kernel configuration, e.g. modules not installed, old initramfs, and similar stuff? I take it we're still talking about that machine which doesn't present framebuffer console either? -hwh -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Xserver on Dell Inspiron M1710
On Fri, 04 May 2007 08:48:20 -0400 Colleen Beamer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: david wrote: What happens when you; emerge -pv xorg-x11 What do you mean, What happens? It emerges, no error messages. Regards, Colleen Hi, Don't have the OP mail-thread, but just a suggestion - boot with some Live-CD (Knoppix comes in mind), copy the generated xorg.conf. Later play with it, man pages, Google, ML etc. At least will have a working Xorg. HTH. Rumen -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
RE: [gentoo-user] Xserver on Dell Inspiron M1710
I might be able to help as well (also didn't see the earlier part of this thread)... I have several M710's at work running both gentoo and Ubuntu, and X is running ok on them. Getting the config from a liveCD is a good place to start if you're really not sure. One thing though - since some other items were mentioned (albeit briefly), regarding kernel and splashimage, maybe a quick review of the system would refresh those of us who are now on the radar with you... sounds like re-hashing, but we can't fix one thing and break three others. The idea here is to get you up and running with the least additional frustration... -Original Message- From: Rumen Yotov [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, May 04, 2007 9:11 AM To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] Xserver on Dell Inspiron M1710 On Fri, 04 May 2007 08:48:20 -0400 Colleen Beamer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: david wrote: What happens when you; emerge -pv xorg-x11 What do you mean, What happens? It emerges, no error messages. Regards, Colleen Hi, Don't have the OP mail-thread, but just a suggestion - boot with some Live-CD (Knoppix comes in mind), copy the generated xorg.conf. Later play with it, man pages, Google, ML etc. At least will have a working Xorg. HTH. Rumen -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Xserver on Dell Inspiron M1710
On Fri, 2007-05-04 at 08:50 -0400, Colleen Beamer wrote: Iain Buchanan wrote: On Fri, 2007-05-04 at 00:32 -0400, Colleen Beamer wrote: Mouse support is compiled into my kernel (genkernel) Although the section for keyboard is there, there isn't a relevant choice to pick, but I assume that's because this is a laptop. are you able to post your kernel .config file somewhere? Perhaps there's a problem there... I'll try, but it won't be until tonight. pastebin is good for this kind of thing (pastebin.com). Just let us know the number! -- Iain Buchanan iaindb at netspace dot net dot au The ends justify the means. -- after Matthew Prior -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Xserver on Dell Inspiron M1710
Hi all, First, I have to thank you *all* for your patience with me. I'm not a developer and my formal computer training is limited. However, I'm not stupid (I know no one has implied that), but I get a little frustrated when I've done something successfully a half dozen times and now it doesn't work. The difference with this Gentoo install is the nvidia card. I've always used ATI cards and after this experience, I think I still prefer them. Anyway, Iain Buchanan wrote: On Fri, 2007-05-04 at 08:50 -0400, Colleen Beamer wrote: Iain Buchanan wrote: On Fri, 2007-05-04 at 00:32 -0400, Colleen Beamer wrote: Mouse support is compiled into my kernel (genkernel) Although the section for keyboard is there, there isn't a relevant choice to pick, but I assume that's because this is a laptop. are you able to post your kernel .config file somewhere? Perhaps there's a problem there... I'll try, but it won't be until tonight. pastebin is good for this kind of thing (pastebin.com). Just let us know the number! I think I *may* have solved my problem. I had nvidia (NV2) support built into the kernel. I rebuilt the kernel without nvidia support, removed xorg-x11 and removed nvidia-drivers. Then I did emerge --update --deep nvidia-drivers. A bunch of stuff was updated because of newer versions being available, but a number of things were installed - like kbd and mouse. I don't know maybe having nvidia support built into the kernel was preventing the xorg drivers for mouse and keyboard being installed. I *did* read the nvidia guide, but I must have misunderstood because I thougt that only older nv drivers were incompatible with newer cards. Anyway, now I'm emerging KDE. Will let you know officially how it goes. Regards, Colleen -- Registered Linux User #411143 with the Linux Counter, http://counter.li.org -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Xserver on Dell Inspiron M1710
Alan McKinnon wrote: On Thursday 03 May 2007, Mick wrote: Colleen's machine is a laptop. They don't have horiz and vert sync signals... Those settings apply only to CRT displays. 99 times out of 100, LCD screens do just fine with a minimal xorg.conf. Here's mine: Section Monitor # HorizSync 64.8 - 64.8 # VertRefresh 60.0 - 60.0 Identifier Monitor0 VendorName Monitor Vendor ModelName Monitor Model Option DPMS true # DisplaySize 331 207 EndSection Section Device ### Available Driver options are:- ### Values: i: integer, f: float, bool: True/False, ### string: String, freq: f Hz/kHz/MHz ### [arg]: arg optional #Option HWCursor false # Check if these three really work on this hardware... #Option ShadowFB # [bool] #Option VGAClocks # [bool] #Option KGAUniversal # [bool] Identifier Card0 Driver radeon Option AGPMode 4 #Option AGPFastWrite True Option EnablePageFlip True Option AccelMethod xaa BusID PCI:1:0:0 EndSection Section Screen Identifier Screen0 Device Card0 Monitor Monitor0 DefaultDepth24 SubSection Display Viewport 0 0 Depth 24 Modes 1680x1050 EndSubSection EndSection Notice how the only things that are uncommented are unky radeon driver settings. I can even take the Modes line out and it all still works just fine. That's because virtually all modern monitors/cards speak DDC and Xorg can ask the hardware when it starts what the hardware supports. The only thing Colleen *has* to customize here is the correct Driver for her nvdia card alan I may be wrong but I think this is not quite correct. I had to look for the specs (hsync, vsync) of my LCD because X was trying to run it on higher refresh rates resulting in out of range errors. On the other hand Colleen said the screen was garbled - doesn't seem to be an out of range problem. Probably it would be best if Colleen attached or linked to Xorg.0.log and xorg.conf and maybe kernel output [if that kernel recompilation didn't fix the problems of course]. -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Xserver on Dell Inspiron M1710
On Thursday 03 May 2007 01:08, Colleen Beamer wrote: Hi all, I'm having a heck of a time. I've tried so many things, that I'm totally confused. After installing xorg-x11, I ran Xorg -configure. It gives me a file with no horizontal or vertical sync. I would think then that you would have to enter these yourself - check the manufacturers manual, or the equivalent OEM product specification. What I mean here is that Dell are assemblers, or box-shifters, they don't actually manufacture components. Their products are usually similar with other differently branded products. If you find the OEM then you should be able to source the hsync for it. Alternatively, you could try different LiveCDs for one that successfully guesses these parameters and run xvidtune to see what they are, or look at /var/log/Xorg.0.log. You could do well to see if they load any particular modules for your monitor/keyboard/mouse too. If you haven't yet wiped out WinXP you could run msinfo.msc to find out what the monitor reports to the MSWindows kernel. Finally, you could try installing Ubuntu, SUSE, Fedora, etc. to find one that recognises and configures your hardware before you copy xorg.conf for using it thereafter with Gentoo. I tried using the ddcxinfo-knoppix tool, but when I did ddxcinfo-knoppix -hsync, it returned 0 0. When I did ddxcinfo-knoppix -modelines, it didn't have a matching mode for my monitor - the default being 1920x1200. I assume that because I don't have a horizontal and vertical sync in my xorg.conf file that's why the screen becomes all garbled when startx bombs out. and, or it could be because you need some special driver (not familiar with nvidia I'm afraid). Xorg.0.log tells me that there is no core keyboard or mouse. I've built support into the kernel. in /dev/input/ there are choices for mice mouse0 and mouse1. I've tried using all of these and trying various drivers, but nothing works. I'm afraid I'm not sure how to help here, but if your mouse/keyboard are not configured properly you may never be able to boot into X. Have you set up something like: INPUT_DEVICES=keyboard mouse synaptics in your /etc/make.conf before you emerged Xorg? You may need to also search around for evdev (I think). HTH. -- Regards, Mick pgp1Uq7rvdH2l.pgp Description: PGP signature
RE: [gentoo-user] Xserver on Dell Inspiron M1710
I just caught the tail of this thread... is this about an nvidia video? If so, even under Ubuntu I had troubles with X. I downloaded the nvidia source for the driver for mine (on a couple of different machines), and compiled it, then modprobe'd it, then added it to the autoload conf file. X worked very nicely after that. I just went through this same headache with another Dell (D420) which had an Intel graphics onboard chip. Although, in that instance, Noven really came through, showing me some of his xorg.conf file, and pointing out the need for some fancy driver loading... Nvidia seems to have its own brand of headache with Linux on a few distro's. I've taken it as a rule of thumb to compile-load-add_to_conf to avoid all of their mess on all of my machines. I don't know if gentoo has this in portage (easy enough to check for it), but Ubuntu has an nvidia-kernel package that is apt-able, and then with the driver in hand, it can be compiled and loaded. I'm sure gentoo, (being a superior development machine) has it (or something quite similar). -Original Message- From: Mick [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, May 03, 2007 3:44 AM To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] Xserver on Dell Inspiron M1710 On Thursday 03 May 2007 01:08, Colleen Beamer wrote: Hi all, I'm having a heck of a time. I've tried so many things, that I'm totally confused. After installing xorg-x11, I ran Xorg -configure. It gives me a file with no horizontal or vertical sync. I would think then that you would have to enter these yourself - check the manufacturers manual, or the equivalent OEM product specification. What I mean here is that Dell are assemblers, or box-shifters, they don't actually manufacture components. Their products are usually similar with other differently branded products. If you find the OEM then you should be able to source the hsync for it. Alternatively, you could try different LiveCDs for one that successfully guesses these parameters and run xvidtune to see what they are, or look at /var/log/Xorg.0.log. You could do well to see if they load any particular modules for your monitor/keyboard/mouse too. If you haven't yet wiped out WinXP you could run msinfo.msc to find out what the monitor reports to the MSWindows kernel. Finally, you could try installing Ubuntu, SUSE, Fedora, etc. to find one that recognises and configures your hardware before you copy xorg.conf for using it thereafter with Gentoo. I tried using the ddcxinfo-knoppix tool, but when I did ddxcinfo-knoppix -hsync, it returned 0 0. When I did ddxcinfo-knoppix -modelines, it didn't have a matching mode for my monitor - the default being 1920x1200. I assume that because I don't have a horizontal and vertical sync in my xorg.conf file that's why the screen becomes all garbled when startx bombs out. and, or it could be because you need some special driver (not familiar with nvidia I'm afraid). Xorg.0.log tells me that there is no core keyboard or mouse. I've built support into the kernel. in /dev/input/ there are choices for mice mouse0 and mouse1. I've tried using all of these and trying various drivers, but nothing works. I'm afraid I'm not sure how to help here, but if your mouse/keyboard are not configured properly you may never be able to boot into X. Have you set up something like: INPUT_DEVICES=keyboard mouse synaptics in your /etc/make.conf before you emerged Xorg? You may need to also search around for evdev (I think). HTH. -- Regards, Mick -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Xserver on Dell Inspiron M1710
On Thursday 03 May 2007, Mick wrote: On Thursday 03 May 2007 01:08, Colleen Beamer wrote: Hi all, I'm having a heck of a time. I've tried so many things, that I'm totally confused. After installing xorg-x11, I ran Xorg -configure. It gives me a file with no horizontal or vertical sync. I would think then that you would have to enter these yourself - check the manufacturers manual, or the equivalent OEM product specification. What I mean here is that Dell are assemblers, or box-shifters, they don't actually manufacture components. Their products are usually similar with other differently branded products. If you find the OEM then you should be able to source the hsync for it. Alternatively, you could try different LiveCDs for one that successfully guesses these parameters and run xvidtune to see what they are, or look at /var/log/Xorg.0.log. You could do well to see if they load any particular modules for your monitor/keyboard/mouse too. Colleen's machine is a laptop. They don't have horiz and vert sync signals... Those settings apply only to CRT displays. 99 times out of 100, LCD screens do just fine with a minimal xorg.conf. Here's mine: Section Monitor # HorizSync 64.8 - 64.8 # VertRefresh 60.0 - 60.0 Identifier Monitor0 VendorName Monitor Vendor ModelName Monitor Model Option DPMS true # DisplaySize 331 207 EndSection Section Device ### Available Driver options are:- ### Values: i: integer, f: float, bool: True/False, ### string: String, freq: f Hz/kHz/MHz ### [arg]: arg optional #Option HWCursor false # Check if these three really work on this hardware... #Option ShadowFB # [bool] #Option VGAClocks # [bool] #Option KGAUniversal # [bool] Identifier Card0 Driver radeon Option AGPMode 4 #Option AGPFastWrite True Option EnablePageFlip True Option AccelMethod xaa BusID PCI:1:0:0 EndSection Section Screen Identifier Screen0 Device Card0 Monitor Monitor0 DefaultDepth24 SubSection Display Viewport 0 0 Depth 24 Modes 1680x1050 EndSubSection EndSection Notice how the only things that are uncommented are unky radeon driver settings. I can even take the Modes line out and it all still works just fine. That's because virtually all modern monitors/cards speak DDC and Xorg can ask the hardware when it starts what the hardware supports. The only thing Colleen *has* to customize here is the correct Driver for her nvdia card alan -- Optimists say the glass is half full, Pessimists say the glass is half empty, Developers say wtf is the glass twice as big as it needs to be? Alan McKinnon alan at linuxholdings dot co dot za +27 82, double three seven, one nine three five -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Xserver on Dell Inspiron M1710
Colleen Beamer wrote: Does anyone have a Dell Inspiron M1710 and will let me take a look at their xorg.conf file? This is from my XPS M1710; I'm not sure how similar they are, but I hope it helps. Section ServerLayout Identifier X.org Configured Screen 0 Screen0 0 0 InputDeviceMouse0 CorePointer InputDeviceKeyboard0 CoreKeyboard EndSection Section Files FontPath /usr/share/fonts/misc FontPath /usr/share/fonts/75dpi FontPath /usr/share/fonts/100dpi FontPath /usr/share/fonts/TTF FontPath /usr/share/fonts/Type1 EndSection Section Module Load glx Load extmod Load xtrap Load record Load dbe Load dri Load freetype Load type1 EndSection Section InputDevice Identifier Keyboard0 Driver kbd EndSection Section InputDevice Identifier Mouse0 Driver mouse Option Protocol auto Option Device /dev/input/mice Option ZAxisMapping 4 5 6 7 EndSection Section Monitor Identifier Monitor0 VendorName Monitor Vendor ModelNameMonitor Model EndSection Section Monitor Identifier Monitor1 VendorName Monitor Vendor ModelNameMonitor Model EndSection Section Device Identifier Card0 Driver nvidia VendorName nVidia Corporation BoardName Unknown Board BusID PCI:1:0:0 Option NoLogo True Option AllowGLXWithComposite true Screen 0 Option TwinView Option MetaModes 1920x1200 1280x1024,1920x1200 Option TwinViewOrientation LeftOf Option SecondMonitorHorizSync UseEdidFreqs Option SecondMonitorVertRefresh UseEdidFreqs Option AddARGBGLXVisuals Option NvAGP 1 EndSection Section Screen Identifier Screen0 Device Card0 MonitorMonitor0 Option AddARGBGLXVisuals true SubSection Display Viewport 0 0 Depth 1 EndSubSection SubSection Display Viewport 0 0 Depth 4 EndSubSection SubSection Display Viewport 0 0 Depth 8 EndSubSection SubSection Display Viewport 0 0 Depth 15 EndSubSection SubSection Display Viewport 0 0 Depth 16 EndSubSection SubSection Display Viewport 0 0 Depth 24 EndSubSection EndSection Section Extensions Option Composite true EndSection -- C. Lee Davis Fantasy Geographic Society http://fantasy.geographic.net/ GCB for GURPS 4e http://fantasy.geographic.net/project/4eGURPS -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
