[gentoo-user] Re: Xorg confusion and no glxinfo

[walt <w41ter@gmail.com>]

On 07/06/2009 03:29 AM, Mick wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> I cleared out some xorg related packages at some point because my machine will
> not shutdown without a kernel oops when it is trying to unload the radeon
> driver.

Hm. There is no reason to unload any driver or module just to shut down.  Are
you sure that's the reason for the oops?

> It now seems I can no longer find glxgears/info.  What have I
> removed that I shouldn't have?

glxgears is part of mesa-progs.

> I remember unmerging xorg-x11 (there was advice in this list that this is not
> needed when using Fluxbox or other lightweight window managers).

That's a meta-package, which just pulls in a bunch of other packages.  Meta-
packages are never needed, they're just for your convenience.

> When I moved to x11-base/xorg-server-1.5.3-r* I also unmerged
> x11-drivers/xf86-video-ati.  I recall concluding at the time that the new
> xorg-server did not need such an external driver - is that right?

No, xorg-server will always need a specific driver for a specific video card,
it's just a matter of figuring out which one your card needs.  OTOH most cards
will work at a very basic level with just the vesa driver -- but that's most
likely not what you want.

> I have set radeon as the video card in my /etc/make.conf, but Xorg.0.log shows
> ati_drv.so - should it be so?

> # less /var/log/Xorg.0.log | grep driver
>          X.Org XInput driver : 2.1
> (==) Matched ati for the autoconfigured driver
> New driver is "ati"
> (II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers//ati_drv.so
> (II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers//radeon_drv.so
> (II) AIGLX: enabled GLX_texture_from_pixmap with driver support
>
> # lsmod | grep radeon
> radeon                145696  2
> drm                   141892  3 radeon

I don't know enough about ati products to answer.  The xorg-server is pretty
good at picking the right driver by itself.  If you type "X -logverbose" at
a command prompt and look at the X logfile you may see that the server has
loaded multiple drivers and then unloads the ones it doesn't need -- strange
behavior but that's the way it's designed, apparently.