I've had this problem for a while, and have tried everything I could think of to attempt to fix it, so I decided to pose the question to those more knowledgable than I in an attempt for help.

Whenever I try to use anything with the svgalib it gives me the error:
svgalib: Cannot open /dev/svga
Is svgalib_helper module loaded?

More than twice I have gone through my kernel and attempted to find an svgalib_helper module, and have also looked around through some forums. I normally have no problems with Linux, and if I do I can typically resolve them rather quickly, so I've been really irritated with this.

If anybody has any suggestions what to do, or any questions about specifics, make sure to let me know, or ask me.

Thanks

did you try
modprobe svgalib_helper

or more importantly if you are using udev did you try loading svgalib_helper at boot

root@slink3r clanaos # modprobe svgalib_helper
FATAL: Module svgalib_helper not found.

and I'm not using udev

If you need any lines from my kernel I would be more than happy to show you

I'm using 2.6.9, the gentoo-r4 version.

and you have svgalib installed-- i think it has to be a new 1.9.19 or greater version for the kernel module to work with a modern 2.6 kernel

http://www.arava.co.il/matan/svgalib/

well I have 1.9.19 gentoo-r1 installed, but I see portage has a gentoo-r3, I'll grab that and see if it fixes anything


---------------------Update--------------

Nope, still the same error

i don't know anything about gentoo but it is building the package yes ??

try instead of modprobe to be more direct with
insmod /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/misc/svgalib_helper.ko

if that doesn't work

is there a ./kernel/svgalib_helper/svgalib_helper.ko
in that source package after it's built ?

if it's there try
insmod ./svgalib_helper.ko
you know from within the directory it's in

does the file
/lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/misc/svgalib_helper.ko exist ?

funny enough, I spent a while searching for the svgalib_helper.ko a while back, and to no avail.

As far as I know I have it enabled in my kernel, I've checked several times, and everything should work, except for some reason there is no svgalib_helper.ko, that's why I'm so puzzled.

it's built and installed when you build svgalib and is not a part of the kernel before that

so i think try to build that package by hand

it may be that if the package can't find the kernel build directory during the configure it just doesn't build and install the module
so make sure /lib/modules/`uname -r`/build points to you kernel build directory before you build the package

This is strange, i got same error when i try installing gnuplot on gentoo. I think i read somewhere it was related to a misconfigured ebuild file, not sure that it is directly related to the module, i beleive when i checked the compile error info it was trying to read a broken symlink, corresponding to the "Cant read /dev/svga" error, so it makes the /dev/svga link pointing to a non-existant /dev/svga_helper/0 file.

I did have the same problem recently. If you don't mind running svgalib as root you can disable the helper by uncommenting NO_HELPER in Makefile.cfg.

bave

I encountered this error just tonight. I managed to move on (to the next error - oh, joy!) by updating my /usr/src/linux link to my current kernel, copying /boot/System.map-[kernel version] to /usr/src/linux/System.map, and re-emerging svgalib (gentoo's 1.9.21-r1).

The next error I'm getting is 'FATAL: Error inserting svgalib_helper (/lib/modules/2.6.11-hardened-r1/misc/svgalib_helper.ko): Invalid module format'.

I believe my opinion of the idea of running a graphics library as root is adequately expressed buried within that error message.

The pertinent use options for svgalib were -build and -no-helper.

It helps to rm -rf /var/tmp/portage/svgalib* before re-emerging svgalib. I'm working now.