It was requested a shared a little of my experiance using X11 with SiS630
and it's framebuffer. As of 2.4.0-final, this pretty much works. I will
try to keep an eye on these instructions as I'm hoping we will see even
more functionality in the future. If anyone can fill in some gaps, please
feel free to do so. Almost all information has been extracted from various
frame buffer manuals.
Using the 2.4.0 kernel and the patch/config provided for said kernel, the
Sis630 frame buffer is compiled into the kernel by default. That leaves
very little for us to do! One of the first issues while using the
framebuffer driver is your resolution. The defaul resolution is 640x480,
but this can be overidden in your linuxbios config file, on the
commandline option with an option that looks like:
video=sisfb:800x600@72
that's 800 width by 600 height at 72Hz. Most any mode listed in
/etc/fb.modes will work, but I recommend you try them out with fbset
first. Or, you can give fbset your chosen values (see the fbset man
page) and add the equivalent into /etc/fb.modes . My personal favorite is
video=sisfb:1024x768@70 but I eat a lot of carrots.
The next issue is X-11. For this, you must have the XFree86_FBDev server
installed. First, you must uncomment the line in your
/etc/X11/XF86Config that says XkbDisable as X11 will not reliably be
able to use your keyboard otherwise. Then you must add a server section to
the bottom as such:
Section "Screen"
Driver "FBDev"
Device "My Video Card"
Monitor "My Monitor"
Subsection "Display"
Depth 32
Modes "default"
EndSubsection
EndSection
You will of course want to change the names of the Monitor and Device to
valid values from the rest of your XF86Config file. Close this file and
then execute the following commands to remove the symlink from your old
X11 server to the XF86_FBDev server:
rm /etc/X11/X
ln -s /usr/X11R6/bin/XF86_FBDev /etx/X11/X
So now you have an X11 server that runs at the same resolution that you
defined in the command line. Normally, one is able to define modes in the
XF86Config file for other resolutions, but the sis630 frame buffer driver
doesn't seem to support this yet. I also have been unable to define fonts
through the kernel's commandline yet which I suspect is also a limitation
of the frame buffer driver. Hopefully when Ollie comes back, he may know
how to accomplish these things. If anyone else can figure out how to do
either of these things (on the kernel commandline, not once running),
please try and let me know how.
Attatched is a patch against the 2.4.0 kernel which displays a LinuxBios
graphic like the ones in the upper left corner of www.linuxbios.org and
the address "www.linuxbios.org" to the right of it in place of the penguin
normally seen in linux frame buffers. It works great and is a pretty good
linuxbios vanity piece :) Made with fblogo.
- Adam
