["Solved"] Anyway to allow framebuffer with xorg?

[treeman1111]

The past two times I added support for xorg into my kernel, per the howto: http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/xorg-config.xml , GRUB2 will freeze on the loading of the initramfs because I have "GRUB_GFXMODE=auto" and "GRUB_GFXPAYLOAD_LINUX=keep" in "/etc/default/grub". Is there any way to get a larger resolution than the default for the console if I have a xorg - ready kernel or, is this just a tradeoff I have to make?

Best,
treeman111

[VoidMage]

grub has very little to do with xorg.
Configuring grub is in some cases a bit complicated - perhaps you need to find a better guide ?

[simon_irl]

There are various ways of getting a high resolution console + X desktop, so there's no single straightforward answer (it depends on your preferences and hardware and so on). If you're using one of the Linux kernel's free graphics drivers (intel, nouveau, or radeon) and you've remembered to enable kernel mode setting, the console just uses the same display mode as X, so it should all work pretty smoothly. On the other hand if you're using a proprietary closed-source video driver like the nvidia driver, things are a little more complicated as you'll probably have to use the VESA framebuffer...or the superior uvesafb that requires a bit more work to set up. All these options are reasonably well documented online. If you build one of the free drivers as a module, it's easy enough to blacklist that module and swap backwards and forwards between it and the proprietary (nvidia or fglrx) modules for testing. There's also the "nomodeset" kernel option to consider if you're doing this: if you want to specify a framebuffer resolution, you have to stop the kernel from using a free graphics driver to automatically set a high resolution for you. So, your grub settings might need something like:

[treeman1111]

Yeah, I made this unclear in my initial post. I am talking about doing this with the proprietary fglrx drivers, not the opensource drivers. I have used GRUB_GFX_MODE=auto in the past, and it worked nicely (this was on Arch Linux). However, I cannot do this with Gentoo. Is there any way to get a default 1920x1080p resolution with only the fglrx drivers?

[simon_irl]

Maybe...I've never seen a uvesafb resolution higher than 1280x1024 on my nvidia card with the proprietary driver (whereas the nouveau kernel driver does 1920x1080 with no problems), but perhaps your amd/ati card can do it. in any case, uvesafb is the way to go: you won't get 1920x1080 with the standard in-kernel vesa driver, and you can't use the proper kms "radeon" driver (which would give you a 1920x1080 framebuffer on your console) if you prefer the fglrx driver for xorg. you have to choose one or the other. fglrx will give you better 3d functionality/performance with some apps, but it won't give you kernel mode-setting or a high res console. I've found radeon to be a better driver overall, because in addition to the kernel mode-setting it's been more stable (as in less buggy) on my old 780G chipset...but if you need the closed-source driver for 3d stuff, you're going to have to set up uvesafb or stick with plain old vesa for your console.

[treeman1111]

Hmmm...that's disappointing. Thanks for the input you guys.