On Monday 25 April 2011 16:03:21 Alan Mackenzie wrote:
> Hi, Mick.
> 
> On Mon, Apr 25, 2011 at 03:12:15PM +0100, Mick wrote:
> > On Monday 25 April 2011 13:11:53 Alan Mackenzie wrote:
> > > > Once it completes you can run --depclean which will ask you to
> > > > remove the older 2.6 python package.
> > > 
> > > I had to (or, at least, did) run emerge -uND @world.  Funnily enough,
> > > it ran to completion without manual intervention.  :-)  I'd like to
> > > run --depclean, but it's threatening to remove my 2.6.31-r6 kernel
> > > sources, which correspond to my working kernel.  What's the easiest
> > > way to protect these from --depclean?
> > 
> > Aha! That's why I said first look at what it wants to remove - you
> > don't want to cripple your system.  In this case of course it won't
> > cripple anything, because it won't remove the kernel image from /boot/
> > 
> > If you look in /usr/src/linux/ you will see a number of kernel sources
> > listed in there.  If you've run update world there should be a more
> > up-to-date kernel awaiting for you to configure and compile it.  Do
> > that first; copy the necessary files into /boot; configure grub.conf to
> > boot with you latest kernel; and after you boot into it and check that
> > all is good you can allow -- depclean to remove older kernel source
> > files.
> 
> Yes, I've got new kernel sources, and yesterday and today I've spent
> about 5 hours head-banging to get a working kernel.  (I've managed it,
> thankfully.)  But the new kernel's X-windows isn't filling my 1920x1080
> shiny new monitor like the old kernel did.  I've still got some fiddling
> to do.
> 
> Call me a clinging cry-baby if you like, but until I'm confident about my
> new kernel, I'd like to hang on to the old one, including its sources.
> It'd also be nice to run --depclean in the meantime.  Do I have to do
> recursive copying or directory renaming to achiev this?
> 
> As a matter of interest, do you know how to configure a framebuffer
> console to fill up a wide screen (say, to a width of 170 characters) as
> contrasted with the 128 characters which were optimum on an old fashioned
> CRT?

I think that things have moved on since the first time you installed Gentoo.  
Latest kernels have the ability to load firmware for your video card that 
takes account of the native resolution of the monitor - without any additional 
framebuffer drivers (like vesa, uvesa, radeonfb, etc.)  As a matter of fact 
you'll get a blank screen if you try to boot the latest kernels with KMS 
configured using any additional framebuffer driver.

To save me describing each step, you would do better reading through this page 
which details everything you need to do:

http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/xorg-config.xml

-- 
Regards,
Mick