RE: [gentoo-user] Xserver on Dell Inspiron M1710

["JD" <jdangler@atlantic.net>]

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:michaelkintzios@gmail.com] 
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

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