xdirectfb

cf25 · Apprentice Joined: 20 Jun 2002 Posts: 158

xdirectfb is new to new to me but i really want to try out some of the features. problem is i cant quite figure out how to get it to work. the documentation seems to be sorely limited and the posts here dont help me much. do i need to compile special pieces into my kernel?

in fact, if anyone has a basic walk through on how to get this working that would be swell!

nempo · Posted: Sat Oct 05, 2002 8:22 am Post subject:

You'll atleast need vesa framebuffer support or similar if you have a supported card in your kernel. Then you need to pass some argument to your bootloader, for lilo you should pass vga=791 to get 16bit 1024x768, I've never done this in grub but someone is bound to know. The rest is up to someone else to explain since I've never actually used xdirectfb.

cf25 · Apprentice Joined: 20 Jun 2002 Posts: 158

so do i have to have a special card to use xdirectfb? i'm not running a stellar system. its a p3 700 with 228mb ram and an ati rage mobility with 8mb as the graphics card. although for some reason linux doesn't like to use it for anything.

3Kirt · Posted: Sat Oct 05, 2002 7:33 pm Post subject: Framebuffer

I looked at trying to get XDirectFB to work a while ago, and i managed to get the FB working with grub but i never did get XDirectFB to work so i can help you with the grub part anyway.

First of all you need to make sure that you have framebuffer support compiled into your kernel, so make sure that you enable "VGA text console",
"Video mode selection support", "Support for frame buffer devices", "VESA VGA graphics console", "Advanced low level driver options" and any drivers that apply to your video card. (if there isn't one, then the framebuffer should still work but you won't be able to use hardware acceleration).

Compile that bad-boy and make sure that you have /boot mounted when you copy the kernel over (i've done that a few times...). Next open up /boot/grub/menu.lst and add "vga=791" to the line that reads:

kernel /boot/bzImage root=/dev/hda?

Or if you want to be prompted for the video mode then set "vga=ask".

After that, you're on your own.

l8r,
KIRT
_________________
Perception != Reality

dioxmat · Posted: Sun Oct 06, 2002 10:37 am Post subject:

check out this thread

3Kirt · Posted: Sun Oct 06, 2002 11:11 pm Post subject: XdirectFB and fluxbox

Woohoo! I finally got it to work! Transparencies sure are perty. I do have a small problem though... When i start up XDirectFB with "startxdfb" it loads up just fine (after a short wait). The problem is that when i quit fluxbox, XDirectFB doesn't shut down! It just sits there with no window manager and no way for me to launch any apps. I can't Ctrl-Alt-Backspace out and Ctrl-Alt Delete doesn't work either. I ended up turning off the computer. (shamefull, i know, but i don't have another computer networked to this one so there's no way for me to ssh in.).

Anyone else have this problem? And if so is there a fix?

Here's my ~/.dfbserverrc in case that helps.

#!/bin/bash

/usr/X11R6/bin/XDirectFB -enableRoot -defaultOpacity 240 -unfocusedOpacity 220 -enableUnfocused

l8r,
KIRT
_________________
Perception != Reality