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| 01:43.56 | msarro | does anyone have any experience configuring Xorg on a powerbook? |
| 02:00.33 | rdm0 | ... somewhat |
| 02:01.40 | rdm0 | My titanium laptop, for example, wouldn't even really work until I changed the xorg.conf to deal with the ATI RageMobility 128 chip. |
| 02:02.59 | rdm0 | That, plus the fact the 1152x768 size isn't one of the 'automatically' supported configs. |
| 02:03.40 | rdm0 | So until the xorg.conf was modified, you really didn't get any good graphics. |
| 02:04.19 | rdm0 | Having said all that, since I upgraded from Lenny to Squeeze, I now have a bit of a problem with the bottom quarter of my cursor tending to flash. |
| 02:04.47 | rdm0 | So I'm not sure my current xorg.conf skills should be taken as 'expert'. |
| 02:05.28 | msarro | hm |
| 02:06.03 | msarro | i am having an issue trying to configure X... when I use the "working ubuntu" file in either debian or ubuntu it causes the screen to go black and start flickering. all key presses get ignored |
| 02:06.46 | msarro | i'm starting with this file:http://mac.linux.be/content/xorgconf-powerbook-g41ghz-17-inch-nvidia-geforce-440-go-64mb-lucid-lynx |
| 02:06.55 | msarro | that matches my laptop exactly |
| 02:10.10 | rdm0 | What do the logs say? |
| 02:12.30 | msarro | can't get to them, none of my VTY's seem to work. I'm looking at a black flickering screen. is there a break sequence for Xorg on ppc? specifically for a powerbook? C+A+delete doesn't work |
| 02:12.40 | rdm0 | It should be in /var/log/Xorg.0.log |
| 02:13.38 | rdm0 | tries to remember |
| 02:14.11 | rdm0 | Apple-Option-Esc, perhaps? |
| 02:15.11 | msarro | rebooting now... hm, this time just failed to a command prompt. |
| 02:15.15 | msarro | that's progress right? :) |
| 02:15.51 | rdm0 | I guess? |
| 02:16.05 | rdm0 | In any case, the older xorg logs might give a clue as to what's wrong. |
| 02:16.22 | rdm0 | You can also start x manually, with more verbose logging from the command line. |
| 02:16.41 | rdm0 | tries to remember the sequence |
| 02:17.03 | rdm0 | Something like 'startx -- -logverbose 6' |
| 02:18.01 | rdm0 | also vaguely remembers commands like xresprobe and vxconf, but doesn't quite remember enough to know what they did for him while he was debugging the problem last time |
| 02:19.23 | rdm0 | There are also ways to start the xserver manually. |
| 02:19.53 | msarro | hm, getting a "no devices detected." error |
| 02:20.03 | msarro | also getting a "Fatal server error: no screens found" |
| 02:21.34 | rdm0 | Well, there's your problem. :-) |
| 02:22.05 | rdm0 | Apparently, the devices aren't being detected/initialized. |
| 02:22.29 | msarro | so much for it being a known working config file ;) |
| 02:22.38 | rdm0 | You're booting Linux verbose, right? So you see all the devices as they're dectected? If not, it should be in the system.log file. |
| 02:23.08 | rdm0 | Well, it might be an okay file. None of the ones people said worked for my system quite worked right, though. |
| 02:24.02 | rdm0 | Again, it's been a while since I last debugged this. |
| 02:25.22 | rdm0 | Depending on the type of Nvidia chips, you might need to load some kernel modules in order to detect it. |
| 02:25.43 | rdm0 | Not sure... ^^;; |
| 02:26.07 | msarro | hm |
| 02:26.11 | rdm0 | But I seem to remember seeing lots of Nvidia modules when I was looking for an ATI Rage Mobility one. |
| 02:27.07 | rdm0 | Again, the more 'mainstream' your item, the more likely it should be supported 'automagically'. But some of the obscure laptop chips seem to not fall into this category. |
| 02:27.49 | msarro | yeah, sadly the nvidia stuff doesn't seem to work so hot... though it worked far better on YDL... working to get a new job and they use debian...lol |
| 02:28.09 | rdm0 | I suspect that Ubuntu loads more suppoort for various graphical configurations than debian does by default. |
| 02:29.03 | rdm0 | Having said that, I think debian overall has more support for more configurations, it just might take a bit of tweaking. |
| 02:29.35 | msarro | yeah, sadly i'm more familiar red hat distros... so, i'm a bit hamstrung |
| 02:29.51 | rdm0 | debian seems to not really like to load stuff that you don't need unnecessarily. |
| 02:30.35 | rdm0 | Well, debian is the one I run, so ... that's the only one I really know much about. Ubuntu is 'pretty close', though. |
| 02:31.19 | rdm0 | To be honest, they're all a LOT closer than different varieties of, say, Microsoft OS. |
| 02:31.29 | msarro | lol, very true |
| 02:31.33 | rdm0 | More like dialects, after all. |
| 02:32.09 | msarro | yeah, the annoying part is locating where some of the key config files go :) |
| 02:32.28 | rdm0 | So if you know how to do something in Red Hat, it probably works in debian, and if not, usually throws out a slightly obscure error message you can google up and solve the problem. :-) |
| 02:32.43 | msarro | well X is running now with Vesa, but there's no xorg.conf file |
| 02:33.05 | rdm0 | You can get Xorg to generate one. |
| 02:33.19 | rdm0 | tries to remember the command |
| 02:33.20 | msarro | off of the current settings? |
| 02:34.10 | rdm0 | yeah, it probes, and then generates one that it thinks 'should work'. |
| 02:34.21 | rdm0 | It doesn't always do the right thing, but ... |
| 02:35.49 | rdm0 | I think it's a dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg command, or something like that. |
| 02:36.51 | rdm0 | You probably have to run that as root, of course. |
| 02:37.32 | rdm0 | You're warned if it fails, then you have to rename the xorg.conf to something else to get out of the failure mode it causes. |
| 02:38.04 | rdm0 | But I'd first check to see if the graphics chip really is being detected during initialization during startup. |
| 02:38.17 | rdm0 | As I said, I think that's put in system.log. |
| 02:39.07 | rdm0 | If it isn't, you really do have to load some kind of nvidia package, or you'll never get it working. |
| 02:40.10 | msarro | hm, is there an actual nvidia package for ppc? |
| 02:40.43 | rdm0 | Well, you have to go look through the available powerpc packages that have 'nvidia' in the name over at the debian site. |
| 02:40.57 | rdm0 | One might jump out at you as being the obvious right one. |
| 02:41.08 | rdm0 | But it's best to look through them all to 'make sure'. |
| 02:42.16 | rdm0 | This is a 'good thing' if that's the problem. Since that explains why Red Hat worked for you, and why the 'working' xorg.conf didn't work either. It would be a nice, simple solution to fix the problem. |
| 02:43.07 | msarro | hm, yeah atm i'm having little luck with nouveau, so maybe that is the path to take |
| 02:43.08 | rdm0 | It probably isn't, of course. But it if is, just load the module, and everything should then work 'automatically', especially with your 'working' xorg.conf in place. |
| 02:44.04 | rdm0 | Not familiar with nouveau, may or may not be a good alternative. |
| 02:44.38 | rdm0 | Sorry, only a silly 8MB video ram ATI chip here. ^^;;; |
| 02:45.41 | msarro | lol, its no problem. Its interesting hardware, and I need to learn my way around debian a bit better, so its good exercise |
| 02:52.09 | rdm0 | Well, getting the screen to work is highly frustrating. If you don't have it working, there's no real point in figuring out whether anything else works well or not, since you're just going to end up giving up anyway. |
| 02:53.04 | msarro | the annoying part is being unable to kill x... so every time i try I have to reboot. |
| 02:53.17 | msarro | not sure why it won't let me switch VTYs either |
| 02:53.37 | rdm0 | In general, wireless is the big problem. For me, wireless and the screen was what needed the most 'massaging' in order to get working. |
| 02:53.57 | rdm0 | So Apple-Option-Esc didn't work? |
| 02:54.11 | rdm0 | It might be one of the function keys. |
| 02:54.18 | msarro | nope |
| 02:55.14 | msarro | tried all of them... nothing seems to kill it |
| 02:55.32 | msarro | plus the permutations of apple, alt, and ctrl I could come up with |
| 03:00.04 | rdm0 | control-alt-backspace is supposed to kill X only if you start it manually from the command line. |
| 03:00.44 | rdm0 | You will notice you've never, ever answered my question about whether your chipset is mentioned in the system.log file. |
| 03:01.38 | rdm0 | You could also probably get the same info by typing X -showconfig at the command line. |
| 03:01.50 | msarro | well i have made progress now... modified the driver from nouveau to nv and its working... now I want to tweak it a bit... and glxgears is working out of the |
| 03:01.56 | msarro | the chipset was in fact mentioned |
| 03:02.26 | rdm0 | ah. |
| 03:03.24 | rdm0 | So you're in decent shape. Heading towards 'good'. :-) |
| 03:04.31 | rdm0 | I apologize, you know what you're seeing, but from this end, all I can do is suggest the debugging sequence I use along with some other odds and ends, and until I get confirmation about something, I can't really guess what the next thing to try would be. |
| 03:05.15 | rdm0 | The very first point was to verify whether the system detected your hardware. |
| 03:05.29 | rdm0 | If it didn't all other bets were off. |
| 03:09.29 | rdm0 | Large parts of my memory are very 'context dependent'. Which means there's a lot more in there than I can offhand suggest. |
| 03:10.02 | rdm0 | Sooooooooo many parts to dealing with various computers these days! |
| 03:10.04 | rdm0 | Tsk, tsk! |
| 03:10.36 | msarro | lol, its np :) I understand.... i know it was found with lspci, and the monitor was found in vesa... so it must just not like that particular module |
| 03:10.49 | rdm0 | ah |
| 03:11.43 | rdm0 | In general, you can experiment a lot, but you want to be very, very careful about dealing with screen settings. Bad refresh settings can actually damage a monitor. |
| 03:12.07 | msarro | for now i'm using the settings supplied from the monitor... fbset is awesome :) |
| 03:13.40 | rdm0 | If you're familiar with fbset, then you might be curious to know that control-alt +/- can be used to navigate the various mode settings. |
| 03:15.26 | rdm0 | Again, something to only experiment with once you've gotten to a 'working' configuration. |
| 03:17.39 | msarro | yeah, for now I have removed all modes except the one from fbset.. i want the x config to be as minimal as possible for now :) |
| 03:17.48 | msarro | now on to the next challenge... wireless |
| 03:17.51 | msarro | oi |
| 03:18.56 | rdm0 | Actually, for me, the very NEXT challenge was trying to get the touchpad to ignore input if it was within a second or so of typing. Since accidently hitting it would result in the cursor jumping all over the place. |
| 03:19.40 | rdm0 | Then sound. |
| 03:19.59 | rdm0 | And only later wireless. |
| 03:20.51 | msarro | luckily sound is working out of the box! |
| 03:21.23 | rdm0 | Full stereo, or mono on both speakers? |
| 03:21.32 | msarro | haven't checked yet |
| 03:21.43 | rdm0 | hee hee |
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