My question is quite general: I have a video card. It doesn't have a driver in the regular X installation, so I downloaded it and installed it. I know I did b/c I can see it in /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/drivers. Now how I go about using it? I mean how do I reconfigure xorg? Using xorgconfig doesn't help b/c the driver doesn't show up in the list when I use xorgconfig.

Specificaly this is a via_drv.so driver for the VIA/S3G Unichrome video card. I downloaded driver of the sourceforge (unichrome.sourceforge.net). Their instructions beyond installation (as for how to actually use the driver) don't exist. So I guess I am supposed to know this, but I don't.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks

The basic procedure is usually to edit your init files to load the driver on boot and edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf to use the driver.

Before doing anything, backup your current xorg.conf to your home directory:

$ cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf ~/xorg.conf

Test to see if the driver will load manually:

$ su
<enter root password>
# modprobe via_drv

If it doesn't return and error, check and make sure via_drv loaded:

# lsmod

Tha will list all loaded modules. If you get an error message on attempting to load the driver with modprobe, there's something wrong with your installation or you have the driver name wrong. This must be corrected before editing xorg.conf.

If you got the driver loaded OK, edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf by going down to the part headed:

Section "Device"

and go down to this line and edit it so:

Driver "via_drv"

Save the changes(note, you must be root to edit this file). Now test your configuration by logging out; that stops and restarts the X server with the new configuration from xorg.conf. If you get a graphical login screen, your new driver is working. If you get a command line login prompt, it's not. In the latter case, login as your ordinary user and run:

$ su
<enter root password>
# cp xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf

This will restore your prior xorg.conf; answer yes when prompted about the overwrite. Then run:

# init 4

which should bring you back to a graphical desktop.

If the driver worked, all you have to do is edit your init files to load your via_drv on boot. That's easily done in slackware by editing /etc/rc.d/rc.local by adding this line to it at the end:

modprobe via_drv

Save the changes to rc.local and you should be good - your via_drv will load on every boot and xorg.conf is configured to use it.

Hi Kilgoretrout,

It looks like you are in the right direction, but I wasn't able to do anything.

As you said, modprobe returns error when I try to load via_drv. But it returns the error for any of the video card drivers in /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/drivers. I can't modprobe any of those guys. Moreover, I am currently using a generic vesa driver to get X. When I do lsmod, that driver is not among the loaded ones.

Can you explain this a little bit? Thanks

The files in that directory aren't the actual kernel modules AFAIK. I think most of them are libraries for the open source drivers that come with X from xorg. The third party graphics drivers are kernel modules and you usually find them, after a successful install, in /lib/modules/<kernel name>/kernel/drivers/video. At least that's where I find my nvida driver. They usually are listed there or in a vendor specific subdirectory and the actual module is listed as <module name>.ko or <module name>.ko.gz. When you modprobe, you drop the ".ko" or ".ko.gz" . You must get the module name exact or you will get an error.