configuring X/setting up correct monitor values etc in gentoo 1.4
 

Hi forum,

As you can see from my distro profile, I have mandrake and gentoo installed. Mandrake is excellent, but learning gentoo is proving considerably harder than I'd hoped.

I'm having mega difficulty in setting up my X configuration properly, and while I have been getting some assistance, perhaps someone could have a look at this thread that I've linked from the gentoo forum, and see if they could advise me as to what I'm doing wrong.

I should warn you, that the linked thread is quite long, and I've made gratuitous use of posting my XF86Config file and the accompanying /var/log file.

I'm getting quite desperate and stressed over this, I've read various "configuring X" type howto's, but they seem so mega complicated, that it's all confusing the hell out of me.

Many thanks in advance for any assistance you may be able to offer

regards

John

I don't remember having too hard problems configuring my X when I installed Gentoo...some tricks were have to be done, but still it didn't take me too long.

So what is/are the problem(s)? I don't know if I can help, but I can try :)

If I saw right in the linked forum, you got an nvidia card, right? (I just quickly opened and scrolled it down & closed, so tell if I got something wrong) If that is so, then I might be of some help..as I too have an nvidia card :) old & rusty, but working (at least somehow).

EDIT: the best place for obtaining the correct values for your monitor is the handbook of it ;) if you don't have it, try searching the manufacturer's webpage & see if there is anything.

I dual boot Mandrake and Gentoo as well. If you still need help, post again with what you need.

I have a NVIDIA card too. :D I had to run it about 3 or 4 times myself. You can print Mandrake's XF86Config-4 file and use some of the info from it to help get you going.

On the screen where you select the driver, there are more pages. I think NVIDIA is on the second page. I think it is 18 or 19 you type in. Make sure.

Later

:D :D :D :D

and here's a tip too: get either nvidia-kernel (emerge it) or install the nvidia's driver from http://www.nvidia.com/object/linux.html so you'll get the right things....then just edit the XF86 config file you said you had problems with, according to the tips given in the readme-file of the nvidia's driver install.

Thanks for the pointers b0uncer and dalek,

I've just about managed to cure the problem inasmuch the person who was pointing me in the right direction at the gentoo forum explained that "If I was happy with the X config that mandrake uses, then copy that over".

He did have to explain how to accomplish that, so my X config under gentoo is now the same as the one that I've got under my mandrake install (I haven't quite managed to work out how I make both installations "see each other" yet so I'm unable to just "cut n' paste" the various files).

The only strange thing is how my Opera installations are seeing fonts (there could be other probs, but I haven't come across then yet), under mandrakes opera install (7.23) the fonts display fine, whereas the gentoo opera install (still version 7.23), I've had to change the selected fonts from helvetica[adobe] to Luxi Sans [b&h] and increase the "minimum size" to 14, just so it's readable - the weird thing being that the page title bar, window tabs, etc etc all display fine, it's only the text on downloaded pages that seems to be screwed up, whereas, if I then view the same pages under konqueror all the text, even the downloaded pages display fine, so it could also be "an Opera thing" (ha, that reminds me that I'll have to check for anit aliasing in the gentoo kde) and the only thing that isn't quite correct under the gentoo install seems to be that it's trying to start the glx module, but then gives me an (EE) marker in my /var/log that it's failed to start, so I'm trying to work out how to "unmerge" (if that's the correct word) and then do the emerge for the nvidia kernel and the nvidia glx again. The other bloke has suggested that I try changing from the actual nvidia driver that I managed to find out how to get, to the generic "nv" driver from the gentoo install.

What also caused a little confusion on my part, is that when I did look into the x config files in my mandrake install, I have both XF86Config and XF86Config-4 I haven't got a clue to work out which one mandrake is actually using. Then when I check the gentoo install, that only has an XF86Config and there's no sign of a "-4" version. I suppose that could be a gentoo thing, as I understand that the "-4" was to allow Xfree86 3.x and 4.x to be installed at the same time.

I'd be interested to hear if you've had any similar problems. Though I supose worst case scenario is to just leave the larger text sizes selected in the gentoo opera install.

regards

John

You need to emerge glx first then nvidia-kernel. I usually don't unmerge them. It seems to do that for you anyway.

To mount your Mandrake partition in Gentoo, you will need to do this:

That should get you to there anyway. If you have a seperate /home or /usr then you will need to mount them next. Once you make that directory you should be able to do this:

Replace that X with the correct partition. You should be able to copy that file over by doing something like this:

I did mean to change the name. Gentoo does not use the -4 on the end.

Post back if you need more help or need more confusion.

Later

:D :D :D

Hmm...well, that Opera thing sounds to me like a problem of Opera itself. If you've changed some of your configurations after installing Opera, you can of course try to re-emerge Opera and see if it then gets the correct font-config? Or the other solution would be to find out where your Opera's config files are, if there are any which tell it where to seek for fonts, and check them through.

I myself am not too familiar with Opera, as I have used it only under Windows back in the days..when I moved to Linux distros, I've used mainly Mozilla (Galeon, too, a bit) and now Mozilla Firebird (which seems to be quite excellent).

Dalek's advice on how to get the XF86config copied is good, but in case you run into problems, I'd suggest you first copy the old XF86config of Gentoo to some other name..or that's what I usually do when I replace old information with newer one copied from another place.

Also I'm not using KDE anymore, as I find it too slow (heavy) for me these days. Gnome is lighter and somehow I like it...but I think it makes no difference whether you use Gnome or KDE, Opera still gets it's font settings using it's own ways. Check out if you can find it's config... (not the one from the browser itself, but a file or something - in some cases the config files tell much more about the problem)

done the emerge nvidia-glx thing, which doesnt' seem to have made any difference - though there must be a different way of doing it, because it seems to want to emerge the glx for the nvidia version #4493 (Well I think that's ther number anyway), instead of the latest version #5328 and I'm not quite sure haow to do that, I'll have to dig through the portage user manual/guide again to try and get my head round it.

Also, I suspect it could be an "X thing", because now that I've got my X 99% correct by using the mandrake version of XF86Config, I noticed this at the top when I tried to use the generic "nv" driver (which, incidentally, didn't work it just made my kde login screen unstable, to I put it back to the "nvidia" driver), anyway, the bit I noticed was

Section "Files"
# Multiple FontPath entries are allowed (they are concatenated together)
# By default, Mandrake 6.0 and later now use a font server independent of
# the X server to render fonts.
FontPath "unix/:-1"
EndSection

So I'm presuming that it's using some sort of default font rendering, because maybe it can't find the correct font path, because of the way "things are done" under mandrake, as opposed to the way things are done with gentoo?

But I'll have to look into that later as I've got to go and cook my dinner and get ready for another enjoyable night's work - NOT!

Thanks for the continued support both.

regards

John

well, here's something from my XF86Config file:

Section "Files"

RgbPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/rgb"
FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/local/"
FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc/"
FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi/:unscaled"
FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi/:unscaled"
FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1/"
FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/CID/"
FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Speedo/"
FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi/"
FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi/"

ModulePath "/usr/X11R6/lib/modules"

EndSection

So I suggest you check out those paths, and if you happen to find fonts there, add them to your "files" section :)

And then something about the nvidia's kernel module....I've updated my portage few days ago, so I think it's (on nvidia stuff) quite up to date. Here are the versions I get by using "emerge -s nvidia":

nvidia-glx: 1.0.4496
nvidia-kernel: 1.0.4496-r3

and they are the latest _stable_ versions. Now when I check out the other versions, which are not showed by default if I use the command above, I get these as the latest (and the command is: "locate nvidia | grep ebuild" without quotes, and then just search-search-search.... :) )

nvidia-glx: 1.0.5328-r1
nvidia-kernel: 1.0.5328-r1

So there are newer versions of those, but they're unstable (marked using "~x86" with the tilde; stable versions use other marking, as you can see by cat'ing some ebuild files). Unless you've defined otherwise, "emerge -s xxxx" shows xxxx's STABLE versions, and if you wish to find the LATEST, you'll have to locate the ebuilds manually. You can of course change this in your make.conf file :) So the reason why your portage would want to emerge the "older" (not latest) version, is that it's the latest stable one it can find. I suggest you use the stable one, unless you wish to get more problems.. :)

Hopefully this gave you some new information...