I recently did a stage 1 install of Gentoo on my PC, and I am having difficulties getting the monitor to do anything above 640x480. I am using the OEM onboard Intel i815 video card, and the system has gone up to 1280x1024 before under my coexisting Red Hat 9.0 installation.

Even when I use the exact same XF86Config file as my Red Hat, the monitor is still at 640x480. When I pass vga=791 to the kernel, I still get a 640x480 framebuffer.

I compiled my kernel myself, and I'm pretty sure I did it right. How can I be sure of this?

640x480 sucks.

to be sure its the kernel itself thats causing the problem you can always get a redhat or mandrake or whatever kernel from their packages directory on their ftp mirrors, you should have no problems simply booting with it though it may spit out a bunch of warnings they wont actually affect you or better yet would be to get a .config from one of those places and use make oldconfig so that you get all the proper modules why dont you post the section of your XF86Config that relates to resolutions, we dont need the rest

In menuconfig/xconfig (for 2.6 series kernels):
[i]Device drivers --> Graphics support:
[ * ] Support for framebuffer devices
[ * ] VESA VGA graphics support
< * > Intel 810/815 support
Console display driver support -->
[ * ] Video mode selection support
< * > Framebuffer console support

...should enable your kernel to take full advantage of framebuffer textmode.


Håkan

Here is the part of my XF86Config that relates to resolutions. Note that even though the only resolution specified is 1024x768, it goes to 640x480. The Red Hat config is identical to this one, and as stated above, it works fine. I have even chrooted to its X server, and it goes to 640x480 under this kernel. And if anyone knows of a stock kernel that has devfs support (required by gentoo), let me know. Thanks.

The full XF86Config is at http://home.comcast.net/~ryhudd/XF86Config

I now realize why genkernel didn't work right! I forgot to use hotplug. I'll try my newly recompiled kernel, and if that doesn't work, I'll try genkernel.

all kernels have devfs or at least all that I've ever seen, however you have to go to code maturity level options and use yes on prompt for development and/or incomplete code/drivers

Huddlebum, hold your horses!

It sounds to me as if you are confusing framebuffer console modes with X modes. X modes have nothing to do with framebuffer modes. The vga=791 kernel option indicates you want to change your framebuffer resolution but you're editing XF86Config-4 which only matters to XFree86, not the framebuffer.


Håkan

I understand that, but I'm saying, neither works above 640x480.

I have tried just about everything now. Can anyone help me, or tell me if I can find a kernel with everything enabled that does not conflict with each other? I'm to the point where I want to turn on everything until it works and then start turning things off.

The framebuffer isn't really that important to me. However, I REALLY want X to work right...

EDIT: ACK!!! I'm such an idiot. I looked at my X log in /var/log and it said that it thought my hsync rate of my monitor was too low to support the higher resolutions. It detected my $*(%(#%#% monitor wrong! I used the text utility xf86config and it now works great.

what version of Xfree do you have are you running arch or ~arch? try running the stable version, I've never had the problem with any version (im running ~arch) also, please post either your make.conf or just your USE and Cflags

edit
just read the rest of your post...great to hear you figured it out
/edit