Re: Console resolution
On Fri, 18 Feb 2011 10:21:30 -0500 (EST), Chris Brennan wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 17, 2011 at 8:33 PM, Stephen Powell <zlinuxman@wowway.com>wrote:
>>
>> Blacklisting a module only prevents udev from loading it. That's
>> because when udev loads a module it uses the "-b" switch of the
>> modprobe command. However, when the X server loads a module,
>> it does not use the "-b" switch of modprobe. They key is to get
>> the X server to not load it.
>
> Well, even w/ nouveau in /etc/modpoobrobe.d/blacklist.conf, it is still
> being loaded by the kernel at boot. I need to ax nouveau first as this is
> screwing up my console resolution as well as not displaying things in X
> correctly (unreadable in fact, but I am able to drop back to console and
> cleanly terminate X w/ '/etc/init.d/kdm stop'.
First of all, please reply to the list for the benefit of others following
the thread and so that the list archives can keep the thread tied together
(by using the "In-Reply-To" field in the message headers). You sent this
as a private e-mail. I'm putting it back on the list where it belongs.
Second, are you sure that you blacklisted it correctly? I don't recommend
that you edit the Debian-supplied file /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf,
or any other Debian-supplied file in this directory, as that could change
with a future package upgrade. What I did was create a file called
/etc/modprobe.d/local.conf. (The file name can be anything, but the
extension must be ".conf".) Its contents are as follows:
blacklist nouveau
options nouveau modeset=0
The first statement prevents udev from loading the module. The second
statement sets KMS off in case the module somehow gets loaded anyway.
The X server won't use the xserver-xorg-video-nouveau driver if KMS is off.
Also, make sure that /etc/modprobe.conf does NOT exist. If it does,
it will override the files in the /etc/modprobe.d directory. Finally,
you must re-build your initial RAM file system, since these files are
included in the initial RAM file system. After making the above
changes, issue
update-initramfs -uk `uname -r`
Then run your boot loader installer, if necessary. Then shutdown and
reboot. Do all this as root of course.
>>
>> I couldn't use nouveau either because my monitor requires an interlaced
>> video mode. The nouveau driver apparently doesn't support interlacing,
>> or at least the version I tried at the time did not. Create a file
>> called /etc/X11/xorg.conf and put the following in it:
>>
>> Section "Device"
>> Identifier "Configured Video Device"
>> Driver "nv"
>> EndSection
>>
>> If your video card chipset is old enough to be supported by the
>> free nv driver, which Nvidia no longer maintains, this should work.
>> If the nv driver won't work, you can try a more generic driver,
>> such as vesa.
>
> Sadly, the GeForce Mobile card in my laptop will only work with the non-free
> drivers from nVidia. I did get the free drivers to work a few times w/
> Fedora Core 9 - 12 but I never figured out how.
It should work with the vesa driver. All modern video cards are supposed
to be vesa-capable. Just change "nv" to "vesa" in the /etc/X11/xorg.conf
file as I outlined above. Of course, performance will not be great, since
it is unaccelerated, but at least it will give you a functional desktop
to work with until you can get the proprietary drivers working.
I saw in another post that you are thinking of compiling a custom kernel.
I don't think it will be necessary to do that. But if you need or want
to compile a custom kernel, here's a link that explains the "Debian way"
(or at least one Debian way) to compile a custom kernel. It even has
an example which includes the proprietary Nvidia drivers. (See the
section titled "A Specific Example".)
http://users.wowway.com/~zlinuxman/Kernel.htm
--
.''`. Stephen Powell
: :' :
`. `'`
`-
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