portable, X on IBM T21

I'm running gentoo linux with kernel 2.6.10. I've tried all the ideas I
could find on the web, still no X. Should I post my xorg.conf here?
Anybody have any suggestion. A response with mail to
XXXX@XXXXX.COM would be greatly appreciated. With an xorg.conf
would be even better. Or perhaps suggestions for building the kernel?

Many Thanks,
Fred

On Tue, 08 Feb 2005 08:15:19 -0800, Fred Krogh staggered into the Black
Sun and said:

What did you try, and what were the results? Be specific.


No; you should put your xorg.conf file on your webspace and follow up to
this message with another message containing the URL that points to your
xorg.conf. Config files and logs tend to be > 200 lines long, and since
not everyone's interested in them, posting them to the whole newsfroup
just wastes bandwidth and pisses off the people stuck on dialup. If you
don't *have* webspace, send the file to me (mind the SPAN TRAP) and I'll
put it up. It'd also be useful to see the entire /var/log/Xorg.0.log
file and the output of "lspci | grep VGA".


"Post here, read here" has been the rule on Usenet for a very long time.
As long as the discussion is on-topic for the newsgroup, it's best to
keep it in a public place--that way everyone might be able to learn
something. Also, groups.google can archive the whole thing, so we have
somewhere to send the next guy who asks about X on a Thinkpad T21.


The kernel is probably irrelevant here. It might be possible to use a
kernel module to speed up 3D operations (depending on your video
chipset, etc.) but let's get a basic X working first. Walk before you
run, and all that.

--
Matt G|There is no Darkness in Eternity/But only Light too dim for us to see
Brainbench MVP for Linux Admin / mail: TRAP + SPAN don't belong
http://www.brainbench.com / Hire me!
-----------------------------/ http://crow202.dyndns.org/ ~mhgraham/resume

As suggested above, you will find the relevant files at

http://mathalacarte.com/fkrogh/xorg.conf

and

http://mathalacarte.com/fkrogh/Xorg.0.log

lscpi | grep "VGA" gives the following line

0000:01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: S3 Inc. 86C270-294 Savage/IX-MV
(rev 13)



My hat is off to anyone than can figure out anything from this data!
Thanks,
Fred

On Tue, 08 Feb 2005 10:09:26 -0800, Fred Krogh staggered into the Black
Sun and said:


Right. This looks like it should work properly, "savage" is the right X
server and there are no (EE) lines in the Xorg log file. What happens
when you start X? Do you get a black screen, or what? This section of
the config file may be a problem:

Section "Device"
Identifier "T21 VideoCard"
Driver "savage"
Option "Use Bios" "no"
Option "ShadowStatus"
EndSection

...this is not correct according to the man page for savage. For a
laptop, you almost certainly want these Option lines instead:

Option "UseBIOS" "true"
Option "ShadowStatus" "true"

...since the LCD panel on your laptop has precise timing requirements
and those will be obtained from the video BIOS *unless* you set UseBIOS
to false. If the LCD's timing is off, you will probably see no picture
or a very screwed-up picture. Why'd xorgconfig set that to false? The
ShadowStatus option may affect you, or it may not--check the man page
for savage for an explanation of what it does.

Oh well. Make the changes, restart X, see what you get. HTH,

--
Matt G|There is no Darkness in Eternity/But only Light too dim for us to see
Brainbench MVP for Linux Admin / mail: TRAP + SPAN don't belong
http://www.brainbench.com / Hire me!
-----------------------------/ http://crow202.dyndns.org/ ~mhgraham/resume

Thanks for the input, but no dice. X comes up and gives a screen with
an X in the middle, but nothing other than <cntl><alt>backspace has any
effect. When starting with "X" the screen has a fine pattern on it,
when starting with "startx" the sceen is just black. This is the same
behavior has previously.
I do appreciate your efforts. Thanks,
Fred

On Wed, 09 Feb 2005 13:02:04 -0800, Fred Krogh staggered into the Black
Sun and said:

[ snip of X configuration details ]

??! If you start X by just executing "/usr/X11R6/bin/X" , that's
exactly what you *should* get! (That's why no one runs X in this way.)
Your X is working fine; the gray screen is the default X background for
the root window and the X is the default cursor. Something else is
wrong. This is why it's important to provide a complete description of
symptoms.


Right. Something else is wrong, then. What's your ~/.xinitrc (the file
that startx reads when it starts up) look like? It should be a shell
script that does a bunch of stuff and at its end does something like

exec $WINDOWMANAGER

...where $WINDOWMANAGER is fvwm2, twm, fluxbox, or about 20 other window
managers. If you don't have a window manager installed, you need to
emerge one. If you think fiddling with .xinitrc is a PITA, you should
"emerge kde" or "emerge gnome" (this will take a long time, 1 or 2 days
or so on this older machine), do "rc-update add default xdm", and set
the DISPLAYMANAGER in /etc/rc.conf to kdm or gdm (kdm for KDE, gdm for
GNOME) and "/etc/init.d/xdm start", and be happy with your new KDE or
GNOME desktop.


Hm. The Gentoo Handbook has a couple of pretty easily-readable and
followable pages on getting GNOME or KDE working with Gentoo. Have you
read those? http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/index.xml?catid=desktop ,
there are some other useful bits there you can look at. They've
translated the info there into a number of other European languages too,
so you can probably read it in something other than English if you'd
prefer that. HTH,

--
Matt G|There is no Darkness in Eternity/But only Light too dim for us to see
Brainbench MVP for Linux Admin / mail: TRAP + SPAN don't belong
http://www.brainbench.com / Hire me!
-----------------------------/ http://crow202.dyndns.org/ ~mhgraham/resume

Your suggestions have been invaluable. Many thanks to "Dances with
Crows". (My last name is pronounced "crow"!) I thought that I had
gnome installed, but evidently not all of it got in. Anyway after a bit
of elapsed time it is in and X boots into gnome. At this point
.xintitrc only has the line "exec gnome-session". This was set as a
result of following the install instruction for Gnome as suggested
above. I have both a mouse button on the keyboard and an external
mouse. Both worked under Windows prior to deleting it so I don't think
hardware is the problem. It's late, I'll start looking into mouse
problems tomorrow.