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gfunkmonk
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PostPosted: Mon Sep 02, 2002 9:28 pm    Post subject: XDirectFB.. Reply with quote

Has anyone had any luck with this?
It installed fine, but I can't figure out how to start a WM, or change resolution...
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weqlin
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PostPosted: Tue Sep 03, 2002 6:01 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I installed yesterday just to try it out.

You can start X using the XdirectFB driver by using the startxdfb command. More than likely it will start some crappy video mode like 640x480, but you can change that. To change the resolution you have to modify the file /etc/fb.modes. Just move the entry you want start X in to the top of file. I also had to change the refresh rate for 1024x768 mode I was using for it to be useful. The first number in the timings line is the refresh rate in pico seconds (ie. 1000000/65Mhz=15384.6 ps).

Although it is nice, starts much quicker than standard X drivers being almost instant, has neat translucency feature, its too slow for everyday use for me, at least until there is a accelerated driver for Nvidia cards. Still using framebuffer is great for watching movies with mplayer from the console, no X needed. I guess directfb would be even faster than standard fb, with the accelerated features it has.
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zypher
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PostPosted: Tue Sep 03, 2002 3:05 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Which kernel-fb driver do you use for nvidia cards?
I tried the one from 2.4.18 months ago, didn't get it to work properly and decided to wait for kernel 2.6.xx.
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dioxmat
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PostPosted: Tue Sep 03, 2002 3:18 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

rivafb . doesnt work together with the nvidia drivers though.
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AlterEgo
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PostPosted: Tue Sep 03, 2002 6:30 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I could not change resolution (stuck with 640*480) using the rivafb drivers for my Geforce 2. I switched to Vesa.
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line72
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PostPosted: Tue Sep 03, 2002 6:32 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

how good are the rivafb drivers. Do they give any 3d support ?

/Line72
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wilho
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PostPosted: Wed Sep 04, 2002 5:15 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Nobody didn't answer howto start WM. Adding something like /bin/enlightenment into dfbserverrc and doesn't seem to help, or running XDirectFB && fluxbox -display :0.0 from prompt doesn't either ...

There's same problem in here: https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=14085&highlight=xdirectfb
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inukshuk
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PostPosted: Wed Sep 04, 2002 7:53 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

ooops, sorry, i missed this thread.

i do have the same problem. i get a blue screen in low resolution (even though the first entry in /etc/fb.modes is 1280x1024) and my mouse cursor on startxdfb / XDirectFB.

obviously the contents of my .xinitrc are not executed, something like
Code:
startxdfb -enableRoot && fluxbox -dsiplay :0.0
doesn't work either.

the framebuffer works elsewhere (e.g. fbtv).

ideas, anyone?
;
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dioxmat
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PostPosted: Thu Sep 05, 2002 7:49 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I didnt try xdirectfb yet, but doent it work just like normal X servers ?
(ie, with .xinitrc and such)
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inukshuk
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PostPosted: Thu Sep 05, 2002 9:56 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

yes, i believe so -- is there anyone who has it working and can confirm that it should read the .xinitrc?
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wilho
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PostPosted: Fri Sep 06, 2002 7:22 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Any luck yet, anyone?

Hmm, do we have anything common:
diplay adapter: radeon vivo64, propably not hardware/driver related..
Crypto-sources 2.4.19r7 kernel with fb support, I can see Tux in boot, so FB is working... XFS, low latency, good bunch of CFLAGS, Monolite 'cos I had some problems while making modules, module load support though.
gcc 3.1 (gentoo 1.3b).

Emerged startxdfb, which emerges all needed as dependencies I suppose...

If I can recall, starting enlightenment as last entry in dfbserverrc and it gives some error - gotta post it later here. I just get stucked with that blue screen and X cursor.. ctrl+alt+F* doesn't work, only ctrl+alt+backspace quits and that's all I can do - not really very usefull.

gfunkmonk, inukshuk, if you got anything common in your box with me - or some other things you think that may be raleted; please post.
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_Konrad_
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PostPosted: Fri Sep 06, 2002 11:27 am    Post subject: startxdfb -enableRoot && fluxbox -dsiplay :0.0 Reply with quote

I don't have xdirectfb so i cannot help you much. But the following will never work :
startxdfb -enableRoot && fluxbox -dsiplay :0.0

It says :
- launch startxdfb
- wait until it finishes
- if the return value is ok launch fluxbox

So whenever you try this fluxbox is only executed when startxdfb has finished.
So you should try :

startxdfb -enableRoot & (which means launch startxdfb and return to console)
fluxbox -display :0.0

(or in one line might work as well)
startxdfb & fluxbox -display :0.0

Konrad
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inukshuk
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PostPosted: Fri Sep 06, 2002 1:30 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

no luck yet...

wilho, display adapter is a geforce4 mx 440, linux-2.4.19-gentoo-r5 compiled with module support, the framebuffer device works using vesafb (penguin on startup + high resolution console), gcc 2.95.3

emerged dev-libs/DirectFB and x11-base/xdirectfb

startxdfb & (this executes /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xinit/dfbserverrc, which starts XDirectFB) -- i get the blue screen with mouse cursor, ctrl+alt+F* doesn't work for me either. adding a wm to the dfbserverrc script doesn't help. however, i do get an error message, here is the output of XDirectFB:

Code:

XDirectFB / X Window System
(protocol Version 11, revision 0, vendor release 6600)
   If the server is older than 6-12 months, or if your hardware is
   newer than the above date, look for a newer version before
   reporting problems.  (See http://www.XFree86.Org/FAQ)
(*) Single Application Core. (2002-09-04 13:08)
(*) DirectFB/misc/memcpy: using MMXEXT optimized memcpy()
(*) DirectFB/InputDevice: IMPS/2 Mouse 0.9 (convergence integrated media GmbH)
(*) DirectFB/InputDevice: Keyboard 0.9 (convergence integrated media GmbH)
(*) DirectFB/GraphicsDevice: Generic Software Rasterizer 0.6 (convergence integrated media GmbH)
(!) DirectFB/core/fbdev: Panning display failed!
    --> Invalid argument
(!) DirectFB/core/fbdev: Panning display failed!
    --> Invalid argument
Screen 0 added: 1024x768


this is where it hangs and i can only ctrl+alt+backspace

does anybody know what the Panning display failed error means?

bye
;
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IWBCMAN
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PostPosted: Fri Sep 06, 2002 3:56 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I just installed xdirectfb...I had istalled DirectFB a couple of weeks ago...I used drictfb in my USE line in make.conf when compiling my gcc3.2 (ie.1.4 pre) system... I had to unmask xdirectb, some not about startups scripts....I exited gdm and went to init 1 killed X and gdm and went to init 5 (I don't have xdm set for the default runlevel) I typed in startxdfb and got the blue screen, moment of nervbous anticipation went by.. 15-20 seconds later up comes fluxbox and eterm(I had already edited my initrc to launch fluxbox and eterm as opposed to twn....) everything works fine- including my keyboard(last time I tried this, a month ago, I could not use my arrow keys.....what a pain) the flxubox menus don't come up when I click the mouse buttons-no idea why....I have a geforce4 mx 440 and I selected vesafb and rivafb support in my kernel confg...NVdriver is running as I type this (ie. I am in mozilla under xdirectfb....) I wish x windows (noral) looked half as crisp as direcfb looks....probably because of the refresh rate.....
can't use gnome or kde apps but everything else seems to work....I alredy mentioned everything that I did, ie. I didn't do any magic to get this up and running....
I did install DFBSee and just played a video....it worked, ie the film played but my screen went all funky (ie by moving the mouse I revealed that which was underlying dfbsee..and I could not find a key combo to kill dfbsee and the mouse didn't help either.ie ctrl-alt-backspace was the only way out of dfbsee....
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inukshuk
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PostPosted: Fri Sep 06, 2002 4:03 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

thanks a lot!

i'll try to re-compile the kernel with rivafb also, and add that USE value... hopefully it'll work, this time.

oh, and i remember reading somewhere that you can try starting with -enableRoot if you have problems opening menus in blackbox &c -- maybe that helps?
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inukshuk
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PostPosted: Fri Sep 06, 2002 4:48 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

okay everybody, success!

i think the only problem i had was lack of patience -- it really does take about 30 seconds until the .xinitrc is executed, so everybody who's stuck with the blue screen, let it sit there for a moment and just wait for a little while... that did the trick for me.

now i need to figure out how to change resolution... /etc/fb.modes i think...
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inukshuk
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PostPosted: Fri Sep 06, 2002 5:10 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

okay, i've been playing around with it a bit now and the translucency *does* look great.

can anybody tell me how to change resolutions though? i'm on 1024x768 now, the first entry in /etc/fb.modes is 1280x1024 though, so where can i change it?

thanks.
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wilho
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PostPosted: Tue Sep 10, 2002 8:30 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Maybe there's something wrong in your system with that resolution, or in that entry.. I got it to work too, and I'm using 1280X1024, works fine.

KDE won't work on it thogh. Is this known problem, or is it just me?
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IWBCMAN
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PostPosted: Tue Sep 10, 2002 12:34 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

From my experience neither kde or gnome2 apps work und xdirectfb, all of my apps were compiled with directfb support, but kde and gome2 apps bomb with unknown xserver errors. On the directfb website they have a version of directfb which supports gtk+(2.05) under xdirectfb, but I do not know if this would let gnome2 apps correctly run. I maybe utterly wrong but I believe that xdirectfb is kind of like X without all of the underlying network communications(messaging) stuff-both gnome2 and kde use complex messaging system(ORBit, DOM etc. ) and it appears that these in turn make use of Xwindows network communication layer-if I am correct-PLEASE CORRECT ME IF I AM WRONG) an app that needs these messaging services provided by the workspace environment(desktop manager) which both gnome2 and kde constitue(in contrast to flux etc which only control window positioning,ie.window manager) they will fail, because the desktop managers messaging scheme utilizes the network protocols used by the X server, as it runs normally(ie. for the X server the local display is a network connection(local vs. remote is moot here, whereas for xdirectfb -only the local display exists, there is no possibilitly of running multiuser apps cross linked over a network with varying displays using xdirectfb, hence its name "direct"ie. the immediate(local/hardware buffer-not an abstract memory map which can talk parallel to mulitple different display subsystems on different machines)

But Of course I could be wrong..... :lol:
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IWBCMAN
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PostPosted: Tue Sep 10, 2002 12:35 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

From my experience neither kde or gnome2 apps work und xdirectfb, all of my apps were compiled with directfb support, but kde and gome2 apps bomb with unknown xserver errors. On the directfb website they have a version of directfb which supports gtk+(2.05) under xdirectfb, but I do not know if this would let gnome2 apps correctly run. I maybe utterly wrong but I believe that xdirectfb is kind of like X without all of the underlying network communications(messaging) stuff-both gnome2 and kde use complex messaging system(ORBit, DOM etc. ) and it appears that these in turn make use of Xwindows network communication layer-if I am correct-PLEASE CORRECT ME IF I AM WRONG) an app that needs these messaging services provided by the workspace environment(desktop manager) which both gnome2 and kde constitue(in contrast to flux etc which only control window positioning,ie.window manager) they will fail, because the desktop managers messaging scheme utilizes the network protocols used by the X server, as it runs normally(ie. for the X server the local display is a network connection(local vs. remote is moot here, whereas for xdirectfb -only the local display exists, there is no possibilitly of running multiuser apps cross linked over a network with varying displays using xdirectfb, hence its name "direct"ie. the immediate(local/hardware buffer-not an abstract memory map which can talk parallel to mulitple different display subsystems on different machines)

But Of course I could be wrong..... :lol:
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line72
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PostPosted: Tue Sep 10, 2002 1:47 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

it is possible for gnome apps to work, but you have to get a special patch from xdirectfb's website. I'm not sure if this patch works for gtk2 though

/Line72
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carrett
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PostPosted: Fri May 16, 2003 8:48 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

i can start xdirect fb with the startxdfb and i can even get sawfish and some gtk2 apps (gaim) to startup with no problem. however, the gtk2 theme i had selected didn't load. and trying to startup gnome-panel, gnome-terminal or nautilus was a failure. anybody know:

1) how to make gdm run xdirectfb instead of X?
2) if there's been any headway in making gtk2 work with xdirectfb?

it does look pretty sweet, but until I can get all my gnome2 stuff working, i gots to stick with X. btw, opengl on an nvidia card with xdirectfb is, as of now, ass. any devlopments with that would be interesting too.

thanks.
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