Hi,

i'm new to this forum, and relativly new to playing around with linux too... i decided to install a gentoo-linux on my thinkpad x21, and all went fine till i installed xorg.
whatever driver i try in the xorg.conf, i get an error saying couldnot load module xyz...

when i compiled the kernel(2.6.17r4) i chose "vesa vga graphics support"(built in) and "ati mach64 display support" (as a module)... i ran X -configure, which set the driver under the graphics card device section to "vesa" (that caused my system to crash after trying this xorg.conf) and also xorgconfig, which set the driver to "vga" (also doesnt work, but it didnt crash, i only got an errormessage saying that "vga" couldnt be loaded... thats because i didnt compile it into the kernel i think)

so i searched the web for information about an driver for this card, and found many things that were more or less helpful. one option is to install the proprietary ati drivers, but as i understood it doesnt support such an old chipset. another option is to install drivers from the dri projekt... i ve read that mostly in association with 3d acceleration, what i do not really desire cause i think the graphics card is too slow for it, and i dont really need it on my laptop. what i want is simply run an X-server without any 3d-support.

and after reading about all these options i am a little confused what to do now.
there has to be a simple solution for this, something like a generic ati driver or something like that.

As i said i'm quite new to linux, and some of the concepts of it, like kernel-modules.
i hope you can give me a little advise where to start solving this problem.

thanx a lot

So there are a lot of possibilities to solve your problem.
But better try another Distribution like Fedora or Suse if you try to start with Linux. I am not an expert and Gentoo is not my favorite Distri. But if you still want to use it we will find a fix. But belive me that if you try to start playing around with Linux it will be much easier to use a more popular Distri.
There are much more How Tos and FAqs released to Redhat Based Systems or Suse even to Debian.

Well, you are most brave my son. so new and to choose gentoo. ;-) I agree with the above. Start with a well developed solid distro like Suse. you should have no problems then with that lappy.

I do not intend any negativity towards Gentoo, in fact i desire to soon do an install of it on my now extra laptop (tp A21m). However for a beginner in linux... I always think it's a better idea to at least see what a car looks like before you try to build one. (unless your name is Benz or Ford)

but if you insist,my Thinkpad had the ati rage 3d mobility, and no 3d did not work nor any use of ati drivers would make it do so, but dri was used as well as mach64, vesa, vesafb, vga . I'll try to look at the xorg.conf and lsmod later.

hi again,

ok i forgot to mention that on my desktop-pc i have a debian-linux running, so gentoo is not my very first linux i try to install (and that debian works very well, except for a little soundproblem with X, but thats another story ^^).
Still, i admit it is a large step from debian to gentoo, and i dont expect to get all working over night. but i am very interested in gentoo (or generally in the concept of compiling my OS myself), and also if it takes more time, i want to do it to the bitter end .

but this problem with my graphics card, isnt it a general problem which i would also encounter if i had installed another distri?
by the way i tried installing the ati-drivers from the portage system of gentoo yesterday, but i got an error always: "doins fglrx failed". i googled for this error and there were some paople who encountered the same error, and as i understood it may have to with the kernel- and the ati driver versions. in the portage-tree there is ati-drivers version 8.21.7-r1, which is a little older i think, since the latest driver on ati.com is 8.28.8 ...

when i do "emerge ati-drivers" before i get the error "doins flgrx failed" there are lots of warnings about "incompatible pointer-type"... (sorry this is only my translation of it, because the errors are in german... maybe i should set my locales to english ^^) and then:

installing fglrx module
install: call of stat for fglrx not possible: cannot find file or directory (freely translated)
call stack:
ebuild.sh, line 1539: called dyn_install
ebuild.sh, line 1013: called src_install
ati-drivers-8.21.7-r1.ebuild, line 182: called linux-mod_src_install
linux-mod.eclass, line 497: called die

maybe this helps to find the problem...

oh and another thing: when i boot the kernel i pass this additional parameters:
video=vesafb:mtrr:3,ywrap,1024x768-32@60
i think it is only for the console-framebuffer, i took it from the install-guide for gentoo
could this cause some trouble with xorg?

thanx for help

wait, is this the laptop.? http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Category:X21 if so you do not use those ati drivers for one. your card is even smaller than the one in my a21m. the x21 has a rage m or m1 (4meg or 8meg) those ati drivers are not for legacy chips like those. Its drm and dri
another find: http://lists.freedesktop.org/piperma...ch/014221.html

so forget the ati driver.

I have yet to do a gentoo install so i don't know much about it. and no Suse is compleatly diff. it's a bit heaftier, not as optomized, but it will recognise and install eveything in a simple manner. no compiling.

i hope this helps

yes it is a ati mobility m (with 4mb memory)
it is a mach64 chipset ...
i just hoped the ati drivers would work although there is no official support for this chipset ^^

hmm so accoring to the link you posted i have to get a kernelmodule from cvs...
ok i'll try this... but the guy who posted that at freedesktop.org says he had to use a resolution of 800x600 ...
that would be some kind of inacceptable ^^

ok i will try it, and when i get any results i will post it here

is this what you used : from http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/ati-faq.xml

Packages
The xorg-x11 ebuild provides the X11 implementation
For a 2.6.x kernel the DRI modules can be built with the kernel or be provided by the x11-drm ebuild
For a 2.4.x kernel series you must use the x11-drm ebuild

i came along this site several times while searching for a solution, but there is nothing said about the ati chipset that i have in my x21 :/

would you suggest to emerge x11-drm instead of just x11?

btw: i found a post at forums.gentoo.org (http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t...nkpad+x21.html) where a complete configuration is described for a x21...

i think i will try that out first

no. I think you're on the right track. the x11-drm is only usefull for dri, which i guess you can't use. i always assumed just x11 j NO ATI proprietary drivers!

good find on the gentoo forum. hope that does it.

i hope so

but its a lot of work going through the whole kernel config, cause there are little differences between kernel-versions 2.6.10 and 2.6.17 :/

and i just accidently exited the menuconfig for the kernel after setting half the options without saving

i need a break i think...
but i will report if it worked

ok i solved the problem...

i simply had to emerge xorg-x11 with mach64 support (USE="mach64")