I'm working on converting about 30-35 win2k machines into Linux workstations.
The machine designtated to form the model image vomits violently when I start X. I've determined via elimination that I am in fact using the appropriate drivers and refresh rates and have determined that the actual driver file may be at fault. While at first it coughed up its lungs while I was using an older version of x.org, it also failed at the latest version of x.org available in the portage tree.
However, I haven't a clue on how to fix it.
I either get this working in the next two days or, as I've already spent copious amounts of time on this, give up on Gentoo and get me a copy of Debian. (Debian might be more appropriate for this project but I'm more fond of the copious amounts of documentation that can be easily found on Gentoo, friendly developers and a package manager whose inner workings I'm already aware of)
Long version:
Here's what happens. I boot the gentoo live cd on an IBM Netvista (one of the older ones, something like this one http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/category/category_slc.asp?CatId=110&msg=1130992 which uses an Intel integrated graphics chipset ), and install it all just fine.
Since our network is amazingly slow during peak times (8.30 to 15.30) I downloaded the latest package CD to go with it and installed X.org, KDE, Firefox and a few others.
Thinking everything is alright, I run the usual automated x configurator, X -configure.
Much to my surprise, it flickers the screen and dies, complaining of weird refresh rates. I look up the xorg.conf.new in /root and see that it keeps on assigning weird non-integer horizontal refresh rate in the thousands. I sigh and go on, writing the conf myself as since X -configure at least told me the PCI bus and the appropriate driver, i810.
I run xorgconfigure, tell it the info it needs and edit the new /etc/X11/xorg.conf to the right PCI bus.
I run startx and it returns me a really messed up desktop. As in, it's definately twm, since the clock is visible, but right clicking renders a scratch on the screen that fails to open a menu and the background, instead of that grey or green stuff that haunts my dreams, looks like a bunch of random static.
I kill X and, just for kicks, run startkde. the kdepersonaliser (the first app to show up on an unconfigured KDE desktop) complains that it can't find a screen to connect to.
Just for kicks, again, I try using the vga generic driver which returns me a working twm screen at 640x480.
I curse random things and pop in the first knoppix cd available. It detects all of the appropriate hardware and, lo and behold, loads an 1024x768 16bit colour screen.
I copy the XF86 (only had old versions of knoppix lying around) conf file to /root on the hardrive and reboot.
Looking over it, I see it's using the same driver (i810) and pretty much the same config. I run X -config /root/XF86.in (or whatever it was exactly called) and see the screen flicker, sputter, and give me a broken twm with a static filled background.
Thinking maybe it's something wrong with the atual driver, I unmerged xorg and remerged it. Nothing.
I downloaded the latest portage snapshot on a different computer (not only does emerge sync die due to our firewall but emerge-webrsync hangs indefinately) and install it on that computer. I then run 'emerge --newuse --buildpkg xorg-x11'. 60 megs of packages (which at 9kb/s is a long ass time) and an over night compile later the same thing is happening again.
So, I know the following:
I am using the right driver (knoppix used it, X -configure picked it up).
X isn't inherently broken (it loads using vga)
KDE may be malconfigured.
The actual driver or driver file seems to be the culprit, but I don't know why or how.
How can I fix it?
Anything else I ought to try? Is X b0rked? I just don't know anymore. The above took over a day to go over (I booted several times into different versions of knoppix and then spent some time finding the xf86 conf actually being used).
I'm not providing exact versions because I don't know them myself (as I'm writing this at home), but if absolutely needed I can google around and find them.
-- [email protected] mailing list
