On Sat, 2005-12-31 at 18:02 +0100, Holly Bostick wrote: > Michael Sullivan schreef: > > On Sat, December 31, 2005 4:44 am, Rumen Yotov wrote: > > > >> On (31/12/05 01:49), [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > >> > >>> Earlier tonight I changed the setting in /etc/conf.d/rc for the > >>> RC_DEVICE_TARBALL from "yes" to "no" and rebooted. Now I can't > >>> get into GNOME. For my personal account after I enter my > >>> username/password the screen clears and I see the default > >>> background color and my mouse pointer, then nothing else. I can > >>> move the mouse pointer, but there's nothing the click on and the > >>> context menu doesn't come up when I right-click. When I tried to > >>> log in as root from the welcome screen I see the "GNOME Starting" > >>> box with the Gentoo logo, but it never goes on from that. To get > >>> out of both my personal account and the root account I had to > >>> Alt+Cntrl+Backspace. I got a Failsafe Terminal and looked at the > >>> log files for gdm and saw this: > >>> > >>> (EE) GARTInit: Unable to open /dev/agpgart (No such file or > >>> directory) > >>> > >>> There are five log files in /var/log/gdm; they all say roughly > >>> the same thing, and their timestamps are consistent with the > >>> times I tried to log in and got stuck. I can't even find out why > >>> it's looking for this file or how to make it stop looking for it. > >>> Can anyone help me out here? -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing > >>> list > >>> > >> > >> Hi, Are you using a Nvidia video card? Reverting RC_DEVICE_TARBALL > >> to "yes" should solve the problem but it's not a solution. udev > >> isn't creating the /dev/agpgart file/link - check if it's there and > >> with what perms. Rumen > >> > > > > > > /dev/agpgart does not exist. As far as I know I am not using a > > Nvidia card. If I was I think I would have a /dev/nvidia as well as > > several other similar /dev files starting with nvid, but I don't... > > > > "As far as you know"? Do you not know what video card you have in your > box? This is not really a wise policy in general (not knowing what your > hardware is), but especially not when running Linux. > > But anyway, here's the deal. > > AGPGART is the device representing your AGP bus, which bus (slot) most > likely holds your video card (unless you have an onboard video chip, a > PCI video card, or use PCI-E, which you might, but most likely do not, > as the vast majority of systems in use today use an AGP video card). > > AGPGART is a motherboard resource, which is part of the kernel. What may > have happened is that you upgraded your kernel at some point and did not > enable agpgart in the kernel config, and/or did not enable specific > support for your motherboard, but this was not noticed because the > previously-existing device file was in the tarball you were using. > However, when you stopped using the tarball, because the modules were > not present in the kernel, a new device could not be created (because no > module/driver was found to create the device necessary). This is, of > course, all speculation, but I can't offhand think of any other reason > that /dev/agpgart would not be created, other than that the module isn't > loaded, and the most likely reason that that would happen is because > there is no support in the kernel enabled. However, this could also > happen because the module isn't explicitly loaded because either > coldplug is not installed, and/or the module--if compiled as a module-- > needs to be in /etc/modules.autoload.d/kernel-2.* and is not there > present, and/or the module-- if compiled directly into the kernel is not > loading because the kernel itself does not have support for loading > modules enabled. But these are all somewhat less likely than agpgart > support not being enabled in the first place (which is itself fairly > unlikely, but since you are not getting the device being created, there > must be *some* reason that that isn't happening). > > What Rumen is talking about is a specific quirk of nVidia cards using > the proprietary nVidia drivers, that the device must be created in > local.start because the device is for some reason not created > automatically (I don't have an nVidia card, so I don't know the > details). There is also a specific quirk of ATI cards using the > proprietary fglrx drivers, that agpgart must be compiled into the kernel > as a module, but your xorg.conf must be specifically set to either use > the kernel module or the module included with the fglrx drivers; the two > are incompatible and the fglrx drivers may or may not work if you use > the wrong one. > > The reason you can get into a failsafe GNOME session is because that > uses the 'vesa' video driver, which is practically guaranteed to provide > a basic display (it's basically like Windows Safe Mode, doesn't run > anything except what you absolutely need to have enough of a session > that you can fix whatever's wrong). However, a full GNOME session > requires the driver specified in your xorg.conf to load, which it most > likely cannot, because your AGP bus is not loaded, so X is unable to > communicate with your video card (which is on the AGP bus, which is not > accessible, because the device file does not exist). > > So what we want is to cause this device file to be created, which would > mean that we have to know somewhat more about > > 1) what kernel you are using > > 2) how it is configured > > 3) what specific hardware exists in the system (which impacts the > configuration of the kernel). > > For the time being, I would suggest re-enabling the tarball in > /etc/conf.d/rc, so that you can have a fully-working system while you > determine the status of Device Drivers=> Character Devices=> > /dev/agpgart (AGP support) in your current kernel config, and the nature > of your motherboard and video card, so that you know what the correct > settings for your system actually need to be. > > HTH, > Holly
I fixed the problem (at least in my personal account) by deleting a bunch of .* directories under /home/michael. I apologize for not knowing what hardware I have installed on this system. I don't know anything about hardware. I find my hardware works better if I don't know anything about it and therefore don't mess with trying to improve it. I had this computer custom-built at a shop I trust, and I've already seen one instance where a piece of hardware they put in claims to be something other than they told me it was. Still, they're the most reliable shop I've ever found so I use them. I don't understand kernel configs, so I use genkernel a lot and make small changes to the kernels using the config of the kernel I'm currently using as a base... -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
