X.Org 6.7.0, messed up image (but it starts at least!)
 

Hello everyone,
I've just followed the LFS 5.1 book, and have a beautifully fast system (on a 586 (pentium MMX, roughly 100 mhz..) that boots in 4 seconds flat. I've always heard that linux was fast, but never believed till now.. Anyway, I proceeded to build X11r6.7.0 off of X.Org (directly from x.org)

Anyway, it built (took all night) and installed nicely, i ran "xorgcfg" (the X.Org equivilant of "xfree86cfg" (the graphical config)) and my monitor flickers a few times, and then it exits saying something about a module error. alright, fine. I go through "xorgconfig" (the text config (same as "xfree86config")) and generate my xorg.conf (the new name for the config file) fine. "startx" gives me the same error as xorgcfg (about a module error).. i notice that it says something about freetype, so i vim up xorg.conf, and comment out freetype. startx works. hurrah!
but wait! it shows me a (huge) text cursor (similar to the beloved pipe "|") instead of the normal X cursor. also, the top half of the screen is solid black, and i can only see my cursor on the bottom half. the bottom half is a gray, and when i move my mouse cursor around the edges of the screen it goes to the X that i was expecting instead of the text cursor. Also, about 30 seconds after going to this mode (from a solid black screen) the cpu light goes on and stays on and the computer is *very* obviously working hard.... but at what? this goes on for some time.. since it's SUPPOSED to be loading "TWM", it shouldn't be that hard on the cpu for that long!

I have a suspicion that it (X) is using the wrong display module, but how do i tell it which module to use? i've looked at xorg.conf, and it doesn't say anything about loading any modules other than font-related ones.. should i add "loadmodule 'vga'" (or equivalent command)? this is an old computer, remember. pentium mmx. :) anyway, i do NOT know what my monitor & vid card's specs are, i'll do my best to find them out and post them here... one odd thing is that it can run at 640x480 at 16bit, but if it tries 800x600 at 16bit, the monitor shuts off.. however, 800x600 at 8bit works fine (though its ugly.)

also, there's this small issue about my cdrom not reading the right session of multisession cd's (?!? what's up with THAT?) but that's irrelevant right now..

Thanks!
derek

you probably want to install freetype2 and also fontconfig (Xfree86 builds them automatically but x.org doesn't which makes sense for most people). Get the source code for both and install them. Both are needed for decent text rendering.

Thank you, however, I instructed X.Org to build both freetype2 & fontconfig.. however, i don't know why freetype2 is broken...

anyway, on topic: i changed my driver to "vesa" and it works beautifully!
success!

- Derek