Re: [gentoo-amd64] video driver / system state question

[Drake Donahue <donahue95@comcast.net>]

On Mon, 2010-01-25 at 19:09 -0800, Mark Knecht wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 25, 2010 at 4:23 PM, Drake Donahue <donahue95@comcast.net> wrote:
> > On Mon, 2010-01-25 at 16:09 -0800, Bob Sanders wrote:
> >> Mark Knecht, mused, then expounded:
> >> > far no luck but I'm learning so it's interesting.
> >> >
> >> >    My quick question goes like this - if I boot with no drivers I get
> >> > a VGA console. If I modprobe a frame buffer driver at boot time then I
> >> > get a nice looking but slow frame buffer console. All good so far.
> >> > However my graphics adapter is supposed to use the i915 driver and
> >> > when I modprobe that - either in auto-load or at the command like
> >> > after logging in - my screen goes 'black'. I'm wondering what I do -
> >> > other than look at what's in dmesg - to figure out what state the
> >> > machine is in. Is the screen turned off? Is the driver running and
> >> > putting out 'black'?
> >> >
> >>
> >> The "black" is the monitor being driven beyond it's spec in either
> >> vertical or horitizontal or both.
> >>
> >> For it to work, you'll need a proper mode line that can be stolen from
> >> some other Linux system  via a google search or by downloading puppy
> >> linux and using that to work out what X is doing.
> >>
> >> With X and gfx, /var/log/Xorg.0.log is your friend.  Especially when
> >> used with a google search on the error message.
> >>
> >> Bob
> >> -
> >>
> >>
> > have you emerged a window manager/desktop? twm and xterm are no longer
> > provided with the server.
> >
> 
> No - I haven't since I cannot even startx and see anything.
> 
> - Mark
> 
I believe the black screen is in fact a running xserver that has no
display manager no window manager no desktop and thus nothing to
display. Recommend you emerge your favorites.
Alternate run:
X -retro to start xserver that will show the old black/white stipple and
a mouse cursor.
Note: you will have to do a power off to get out of X.