Bought some new flat screens that insist they don't need drivers, but insist on being run at 1250x1024@60Hz. Upgraded from kernel 2.4 to 2.17.7, thinking that would fix me up Didn't though. Tried editing xorg.conf & then couldn't get X to open. !!Did discover that alt+F6 w/ a locked up X gave me runlevel 3 access!! (Any more useful secrets like that out there?) Anyway, I'm still stuck at 1024x768. 'lsmod' says nvidiafb 50332 0. Don't know what the 0 means. Tried depmod -n on 'nvdia' (agp card is [GeForce4 MX 420]) and got 125k of stuff I don't begin to understand. I'm sure the driver I need is there somewhere, but I apparently didn't get it in the kernel. Can I go back and do 'make menuconfig' or whatever again, or where do I start? How do I find out what module I need and what aliases go w/ what modules? And what's a 'generic' module? 'lsmod' says I have one. Any hints would be valuable and greatly appreciated.

Shouldn't that be 1280x1024?

Are you trying to get the console framebuffer to display 1280x1024, or get XWindows to display 1280x1024? They are set differently.

Framebuffer resolutions are set in lilo.conf in Slackware. You can use the following table to set the resolution (or use the decimal equivalent as Slackware uses):

[HTML]
Colours 640x400 640x480 800x600 1024x768 1152x864 1280x1024 1600x1200
--------+--------------------------------------------------------------
4 bits | ? ? 0x302 ? ? ? ?
8 bits | 0x300 0x301 0x303 0x305 0x161 0x307 0x31C
15 bits | ? 0x310 0x313 0x316 0x162 0x319 0x31D
16 bits | ? 0x311 0x314 0x317 0x163 0x31A 0x31E
24 bits | ? 0x312 0x315 0x318 ? 0x31B 0x31F
32 bits | ? ? ? ? 0x164 ?[/HTML]

(from http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Framebuffer-HOWTO-5.html#ss5.3)

X resolution will depend on the vertical and horizontal refresh rates defined on /etc/X11/xorg.conf, and the maximum resolution defined. Just setting the resolution of the refresh rates and video memory will not support it will cause X to revert to a lower resolution that is supported. Look at the Monitor and Screen sections of xorg.conf to see what is set there.

Bob

Can you download the nvidia driver somehow?
get it from here:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/unix.html
you probably want the first one on this page
run as root from the directory you put it in:
sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-8762-pkg1.run
It will install the driver for your card, and then prompt you to modify xorg.conf which you probably will want to do.At the least you will want
Driver "nvidia"
and not "nv" in the Device section.
I recommend starting with just one screen to start with...


tobyl

Shouldn't that be 1280x1024? - Yeah, Mdarby, thanks.

To rje_NC:
Are you trying to get the console framebuffer to display 1280x1024, or get XWindows to display 1280x1024? They are set differently. - Must be X. Post boots up in itsy bitsy letters. X is 1024x768. I Set that up in Grub. As far as xorg.conf goes "it will cause X to revert to a lower resolution that is supported", that's what's happening. The possibilities are there, but when I go through Xorg.0.log is says that 1280x1050 isn't supported yet.

re tobyl:
I did give that a look, but my agp card is kind of old and I wasn't sure which to choose from. Guess I'll have to give it a try though.

As far as all the modules that didn't get installed, can I go back and reinstall the kernel and choose more mods? I have half of what I used to have, and 1/3 of what Fedoras got.

During boot up I get FATAL ERRORS (duh duh): agpgart, usb-uhci, usb-storage, emu10k1. Can't see anything about this in any of the logs though.

And there's other stuff, but that's enough for now. Thanks for the tips. I guess I'll go to http://www.nvidia.com/object/unix.html first and see what happens.

Any tips on finding modules=alias names or something along those lines? Right now, running depmod -n just makes me depressed. Thanks again all!! lynnevan

The 'alias' deal you are looking for is in /etc/modprobe.conf

Just an empty file. Sigh.

lynnevan said:
Just an empty file

about /etc/modprobe.conf

Depending upon the kernel you're running, it can either be /etc/modprobe.conf or /etc/modules.conf. Mine is the latter.

Anyway, the only things in my modules.conf are for alsa. They got there by running alsaconf to get sound.

When you find out what driver you want to run you should search for it in the script that loads modules, /etc/rc.d/rc.modules. I had to uncomment the line that said: /sbin/modprobe r128 (I've got an old 8meg on-board graphics chip). You might also have to load the driver yourself by adding a line like that if your module (driver) isn't listed.

EDIT:
You can find those error "missing" error messages in several ways. During he boot process, as they scroll by, try pressing either the Scroll Lock key or Ctrl-S (control and S). Then you can use either Page Up and Page Down or Shift-Page Up and Shift-Page Down (I always get it wrong). Control-Q or Scroll Lock again should resume the boot process. After boot try issuing the command dmesg | more to see some of the messages or more /var/log/syslog (probably you need to be root to do those) to see the rest of those messages.

The nvidia driver I suggested is correct for your card. The nvidia 'legacy' driver is for geforce2 and older.

To answer another of your questions, yes of course you can recompile your kernel to add stuff you left out before.

If you compile drivers into the kernel, they will not be visible in lsmod, the advantage being that the driver is available at boot time (important for hard disk drivers etc). Modules however have the advantage that they are only loaded if needed, so do not use up system resources unnecessarily. Another advantage of modules is that you can update them without recompiling the kernel (alsa and nvidia spring to mind).

The nvidia driver is not open source. This means you will get a 'tainted kernel' message in dmesg. However the increased performance it gives means most people (including me) swallow their open source ideals until that message has gone by!

So recompile your kernel (if .config exists, your previous settings will remain and you only have to tweak the changes you require, but if you enter 'make clean' your previous settings will be lost), and add modular support for those fatal errors you got.

with an nvidia card, the settings below work for me

# Graphics support
#
CONFIG_FB=y
CONFIG_FB_CFB_FILLRECT=y
CONFIG_FB_CFB_COPYAREA=y
CONFIG_FB_CFB_IMAGEBLIT=y
# CONFIG_FB_MACMODES is not set
CONFIG_FB_MODE_HELPERS=y
# CONFIG_FB_TILEBLITTING is not set
# CONFIG_FB_CIRRUS is not set
# CONFIG_FB_PM2 is not set
# CONFIG_FB_CYBER2000 is not set
# CONFIG_FB_ARC is not set
# CONFIG_FB_ASILIANT is not set
# CONFIG_FB_IMSTT is not set
CONFIG_FB_VGA16=m
CONFIG_FB_VESA=y
CONFIG_VIDEO_SELECT=y
# CONFIG_FB_HGA is not set
# CONFIG_FB_S1D13XXX is not set
CONFIG_FB_NVIDIA=m
CONFIG_FB_NVIDIA_I2C=y
# CONFIG_FB_RIVA is not set
# CONFIG_FB_I810 is not set
# CONFIG_FB_INTEL is not set
# CONFIG_FB_MATROX is not set
# CONFIG_FB_RADEON_OLD is not set
# CONFIG_FB_RADEON is not set
# CONFIG_FB_ATY128 is not set
# CONFIG_FB_ATY is not set
# CONFIG_FB_SAVAGE is not set
# CONFIG_FB_SIS is not set
# CONFIG_FB_NEOMAGIC is not set
# CONFIG_FB_KYRO is not set
# CONFIG_FB_3DFX is not set
# CONFIG_FB_VOODOO1 is not set
# CONFIG_FB_CYBLA is not set
# CONFIG_FB_TRIDENT is not set
# CONFIG_FB_GEODE is not set
# CONFIG_FB_VIRTUAL is not set

#
# Console display driver support
#
CONFIG_VGA_CONSOLE=y
CONFIG_DUMMY_CONSOLE=y
CONFIG_FRAMEBUFFER_CONSOLE=y
# CONFIG_FRAMEBUFFER_CONSOLE_ROTATION is not set
CONFIG_FONTS=y
# CONFIG_FONT_8x8 is not set
CONFIG_FONT_8x16=y
# CONFIG_FONT_6x11 is not set
# CONFIG_FONT_7x14 is not set
# CONFIG_FONT_PEARL_8x8 is not set
# CONFIG_FONT_ACORN_8x8 is not set
# CONFIG_FONT_MINI_4x6 is not set
# CONFIG_FONT_SUN8x16 is not set
# CONFIG_FONT_SUN12x22 is not set
# CONFIG_FONT_10x18 is not set

(your kernel options may vary slightly)

hope that helps

tobyl

To jamesf:
Same here re modprobe & modules.conf. re "EDIT: You can find.......". Didn't know that. That will be a big help!! Thanks!!
To tobyl:
Downloaded & installed the latest & is working GREAT! Sure feels good when something works - thank you. Yeah, it's tainted. I can live w/ it. Special thanks for the info about recompiling the kernel. I was hoping somebody would answer that.
BTW, I realized the FATAL ERRORS are about some things I have uncommented in rc.modules.
Thanks again for the feedback all. Sure learn a lot hanging around LQ/slack!!