[SOLVED] "Lost" /dev/dri with Slackware 13.0 -> 13.1 upgrade

jeffnik · 05-30-2010, 01:40 PM

Hi folks,

Recently I upgraded by laptop from Slackware 13.0 to Slackware 13.1 (via DVD) following the instructions in the UPGRADE.TXT. Every part of the upgrade seemed to go with the exception that I could not start X.

Poking around in the logs I found that X wouldn't start because there was no /dev/dri/card0 directory, even though the drivers for my Intel i915 video card were loaded.

I manually created /dev/dri/card0 using:

Code:

sudo mkdir -p /dev/dri/
sudo mknod /dev/dri/card0 -m 0600 c 226 0

and was the able to start X correctly.

Of course, a subsequent reboot cleaned out my /dev/dri directory... but I can't figure out a consistent way to have this directory created (and this was not an issue for my laptop under Slackware 13.0). I'm assuming I would do this via udev, but I'm not that well versed in that software.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions!

bgeddy · 05-30-2010, 02:49 PM

Having a google around for this it seems quite a common problem. One possible solution I saw was creating a symlink at boot time from /dev/dri/card0 to /dev/card0. You will need to check if /dev/card0 is there and if so you could put this in your /etc/rc.d/rc.local:

Code:

mkdir /dev/dri
ln -s /dev/card0 /dev/dri/card0

Obviously a custom udev rule would be superior. Try googling "intel i915 /dev/dri" and see what's been found.

jeffnik · 05-30-2010, 07:51 PM

Thanks bgeddy!

I'll keep looking for a more permanent solution, but this'll help get me up and running in the meantime.

jeffnik · 06-06-2010, 11:41 AM

I found a solution to my problem. Apparently I had added a custom udev rule in my Slackware 13.0 install to try and get my Palm Pilot working correctly.

As I was working with my system I noticed that some other things weren't working properly, such as the sound in Flash videos, and tracing that back the device links to my mixer and what-not were missing (though I had sound in Amarok). After trying a lot of different fixes and nothing really working (with the exception of adding symlink after symlink to missing devices), I finally caught an error message that flashed by during boot. The message referenced a custom udev rule that I had created that could result in issues creating device names.

I removed the custom rules and commented out the symlinks from my rc.local and rebooted. Lo and behold, X came up properly, alsamixer is now accessible... it seems like everything is working properly now!