What locale/codeset do you run your slackware box on?

GazL · 08-05-2014, 10:05 AM

I don't know whether its because the slackware generic kernel has CONFIG_FB_VESA=y in it and that is taking precedence, but I couldn't get an nvidiafb based console to start whether the nvidia module was installed or not. The VESA FB actually works quite well for me, except I've not found a way to make it do 1920x1080 widescreen. 1280x1024 with black bars down the side is the best result I can get.

brianL · 08-05-2014, 10:12 AM

Well, according to that old thread I mentioned, if you have the NVidia driver, and you want the console/framebuffer to match your monitor size - you have to build and install uvesafb.

Didier Spaier · 08-05-2014, 02:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by GazL

I don't know whether its because the slackware generic kernel has CONFIG_FB_VESA=y in it and that is taking precedence, but I couldn't get an nvidiafb based console to start whether the nvidia module was installed or not.

I already tried to use vga16fb (after vga = normal) just to see how fbterm would work then, to no avail.

I'm compiling a kernel now with CONFIG_FB_VESA=n to see what happens, with nvidiafb as well as vga16fb, and check if fbterm can make use of these.

brianL · 08-05-2014, 04:04 PM

I've been thinking: do I really need the NVidia driver? I don't play games. Can't think what else it would be better for. I only tried the nouveau driver briefly when I first installed 14.1, it seemed OK. Might give it a more thorough go. Really, a better looking console would be more useful.
Have I got this right?
All at runlevel 3:

Code:

removepkg xf86-video-nouveau-blacklist-*

then:
X

Code:

NVIDIA-Linux-* uninstall

X
EDIT: Guessed wrong here, should be:

Code:

nvidia-uninstall

then:

Code:

upgradepkg --reinstall xf86-video-nouveau-1.*

Reboot, and pray.

Didier Spaier · 08-05-2014, 04:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by brianL

Reboot, and pray.

These last two actions are needless , IMHO. But to be safe I'd reinstall xorg-server and mesa before typing "startx". Even if that's not really necessary, that won't hurt.

Bear in mind though that the NVIDIA drivers have a better power management than nouveau. I'm not a gamer so that's the reason I use a NVIDIA driver on my old laptop: less overheating.

brianL · 08-05-2014, 04:32 PM

Reboot to make sure everything is working as it should; and I never pray, so I can skip that. Anyway, I'll give it some more thought before I act.

Didier Spaier · 08-05-2014, 05:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by brianL

From a quick googling, you can't use nvidiafb with the NVidia driver.

Yes you can. I just tried after having installed a kernel with no vesa frame buffer and loaded the nvidiafb module.

As they say in Oldham:

Quote:

Better googling than nothing.
But better trying than googling.

Something is weird though: loading nvidiafb doesn't really launch a frame buffer, as "cat /proc/fb" returns nothing and no frame buffer device (aka /dev/fb*) is created.

Other than that vga16fb does create a frame buffer device, but unfortunately it's unusable by fbterm that fall back to using a VESA mode (though not using vesafb).

But maybe we should go back on topic, sorry for the digression.

mostlyharmless · 08-05-2014, 06:41 PM

Using the default, whatever that is these days. I use the NVIDIA driver and have the same

Code:

NVRM: Your system is not currently configured to drive a VGA console
NVRM: on the primary VGA device. The NVIDIA Linux graphics driver
NVRM: requires the use of a text-mode VGA console. Use of other console
NVRM: drivers including, but not limited to, vesafb, may result in
NVRM: corruption and stability problems, and is not supported.

"no framebuffer system stability" warning on boot because I'm running on UEFI, so I'm not sure which framebuffer is available, apparently just efifb, which NVIDIA can't live with. Apparently UEFI and NVIDIA can't get it together; there are some amusing posts on devtalk.nvidia.com, though most of them are Apple related.

Whether or not it would help, the nouveau driver isn't an option because it apparently is incompatible with VGA passthrough. https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=162768&p=1 https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=162768&p=1 which I do to my VM on the other screen.

I guess I'd like to use something else; it'd be nice to be able to switch to French characters every now and then, for example, or just have more text on the screen, but I'm not sure where to get started.... It's on the list of things to get to.. one of these days.

Is this off topic? I did answer the poll question.

brianL · 08-05-2014, 07:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mostlyharmless

"no framebuffer system stability" warning on boot because I'm running on UEFI,

No, that warning has nothing to do with UEFI, everybody gets that when mixing the NVidia driver with framebuffers.
Just one more digression:
Got rid of NVidia, reinstalled nouveau successfully.

Code:

bash-4.2$ lsmod
Module                  Size  Used by
pci_stub                1373  1 
vboxpci                14485  0 
vboxnetadp             18355  0 
vboxnetflt             17484  0 
vboxdrv               331277  3 vboxnetadp,vboxnetflt,vboxpci
xt_limit                1937  2 
xt_pkttype              1083  1 
ipv6                  292446  30 
xt_tcpudp               2463  17 
xt_LOG                 12435  11 
xt_conntrack            3257  6 
iptable_mangle          1576  0 
iptable_nat             2774  0 
nf_nat_ipv4             3528  1 iptable_nat
iptable_filter          1480  1 
nf_conntrack_irc        3675  0 
nf_nat_ftp              1788  0 
nf_conntrack_ftp        6699  1 nf_nat_ftp
nf_nat                 13067  3 nf_nat_ftp,nf_nat_ipv4,iptable_nat
nf_conntrack_ipv4       7846  7 
nf_defrag_ipv4          1363  1 nf_conntrack_ipv4
nf_conntrack           53552  8 nf_nat_ftp,nf_nat,nf_nat_ipv4,xt_conntrack,nf_conntrack_ftp,nf_conntrack_irc,iptable_nat,nf_conntrack_ipv4
ip_tables              16642  3 iptable_filter,iptable_mangle,iptable_nat
x_tables               16383  8 xt_pkttype,ip_tables,xt_tcpudp,xt_limit,xt_conntrack,xt_LOG,iptable_filter,iptable_mangle
lp                      9851  0 
fuse                   73848  3 
snd_hda_codec_hdmi     29622  4 
rtl8192cu              63344  0 
hid_generic             1145  0 
usbhid                 37080  0 
rtlwifi                70052  1 rtl8192cu
hid                    87523  2 hid_generic,usbhid
rtl8192c_common        35873  1 rtl8192cu
mac80211              429423  2 rtlwifi,rtl8192cu
cfg80211              380228  2 mac80211,rtlwifi
rfkill                 15522  3 cfg80211
snd_hda_codec_realtek    34792  1 
snd_hda_intel          34861  4 
nouveau               951981  3                                                                                                                              
snd_hda_codec         143196  3 snd_hda_codec_realtek,snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_intel
mxm_wmi                 1427  1 nouveau
wmi                     8243  2 mxm_wmi,nouveau
snd_hwdep               6388  1 snd_hda_codec
snd_pcm                76009  3 snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_codec,snd_hda_intel
snd_page_alloc          7098  2 snd_pcm,snd_hda_intel
snd_timer              18614  1 snd_pcm
video                  11451  1 nouveau
ttm                    63381  1 nouveau
drm_kms_helper         35118  1 nouveau
drm                   229054  5 ttm,drm_kms_helper,nouveau
snd                    58630  15 snd_hda_codec_realtek,snd_hwdep,snd_timer,snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_pcm,snd_hda_codec,snd_hda_intel
soundcore               5354  1 snd
agpgart                27267  2 drm,ttm
ppdev                   5862  0 
processor              27543  0 
thermal_sys            22993  2 video,processor
freq_table              2628  1 thermal_sys
forcedeth              56722  0 
k8temp                  3498  0 
hwmon                   1337  3 k8temp,nouveau,thermal_sys
i2c_algo_bit            5351  1 nouveau
parport_pc             19332  1 
psmouse                81058  0 
i2c_dev                 5843  0 
ohci_hcd               23924  0 
ehci_pci                3688  0 
ehci_hcd               39275  1 ehci_pci
i2c_nforce2             5287  0 
i2c_core               20936  6 drm,i2c_dev,drm_kms_helper,i2c_algo_bit,nouveau,i2c_nforce2
parport                30389  3 lp,ppdev,parport_pc
serio_raw               4585  0 
evdev                   9648  4 
button                  4696  1 nouveau
loop                   18479  0 
ext4                  446120  1 
jbd2                   76403  1 ext4
mbcache                 5666  1 ext4

Code:

bash-4.2$ cat /proc/fb
0 nouveaufb

OK, I'll let you all get back to locales now.

TracyTiger · 08-05-2014, 08:28 PM

From reading the posts in this poll thread it appears I'm not the only one that doesn't spend any time dealing with text encoding and doesn't know what the default is.

I'm using the default and I'll answer the poll with a guess of 8859-1, but maybe it's 8859-15 or something else.

Your results may be skewed. People that configure a different locale/encoding know what they've done and can quickly vote. Those of us that use the default may not know and instead of guessing may not vote.

A "Default" choice would have been nice.

aaazen · 08-05-2014, 08:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by irgunII

I *think* I have utf8 setup on my system, but not sure, though it *is* in use in my bash console.

When I do this though, it show's nothing is utf8.

Code:

me@home:~$ locale
LANG=en_US
LC_CTYPE="en_US"
LC_NUMERIC="en_US"
LC_TIME="en_US"
LC_COLLATE=C
LC_MONETARY="en_US"
LC_MESSAGES="en_US"
LC_PAPER="en_US"
LC_NAME="en_US"
LC_ADDRESS="en_US"
LC_TELEPHONE="en_US"
LC_MEASUREMENT="en_US"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="en_US"
LC_ALL=

Somehow or another I'm sure I've got utf8 setup for use on my system...

Your character set is probably ISO-8859-1, the Slackware default 8-bit ASCII Western Europe character set.

To check which character set you are running use this command:

Code:

$ locale charmap

My output shows: ISO-8859-1

If you did not change the /etc/profile.d/lang.sh file or some other profile, then your character set is very likely the default.

http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docvie...id=swg21233177

ReaperX7 · 08-05-2014, 08:34 PM

en_US.ISO-8859-1 here.

GazL · 08-06-2014, 03:54 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TracyTiger

From reading the posts in this poll thread it appears I'm not the only one that doesn't spend any time dealing with text encoding and doesn't know what the default is.

I'm using the default and I'll answer the poll with a guess of 8859-1, but maybe it's 8859-15 or something else.

Your results may be skewed. People that configure a different locale/encoding know what they've done and can quickly vote. Those of us that use the default may not know and instead of guessing may not vote.

A "Default" choice would have been nice.

Yes, perhaps my assumption that people know what codeset their locale uses was unrealistic. Though I'd expect Slackers to have more of an understanding of such things than users of some of the "easier" distros that come pre-configured for utf-8. The main aim was to determine if Slackers are actively switching to utf-8, and for that the distribution over the other 3 categories doesn't really matter.

Anyway, as it currently stands, it looks like:
One other and I wanted to use the euro symbol and changed from 8859-1 to 8859-15; 10 people picked either 8859-1 (the default for en_* locales) or 'Other' and the vast majority (currently 41) have moved to utf-8.

So, it very much looks like "8 out of 10 owners whom expressed a preference said their cats preferred UTF-8". I really wasn't expecting it to be as high as that (though to be honest, I'm not sure what I was expecting).

brianL · 08-06-2014, 03:59 AM

Code:

bash-4.2$ locale charmap
UTF-8

That's on my desktop. Haven't run that particular command on my laptop & netbook. Laptop most likely 8859-1. Netbook

And most of the cats in this neighbourhood speak Punjabi.

Didier Spaier · 08-06-2014, 04:07 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by brianL

And most of the cats in this neighbourhood speak Punjabi.

In other words:
ਅਤੇ ਇਸ ਇਲਾਕੇ ਵਿੱਚ ਬਿੱਲੀਆ ਦੇ ਸਭ ਨੂੰ ਪੰਜਾਬੀ ਬੋਲਦੇ ਹਨ.