Menuconfig Options

[gabeguss]

I installed Gentoo in Vmware Player. I configured the kernel manually and researched a lot of the options for fun. But I have been unable to get any kind of framebuffer or find a way to increase the size of the terminal (virtual?) which you log into after boot. Based on searching the internet it looks like the vmwgfx driver is the best one to try and it gives you a framebuffer as well. I built this driver from scratch (git) recently for Ubuntu and was able to get it working. In that case it was added as a module. I found some information on Gentoo which indicates the vmwgfx driver is already in the kernel and you select it during configuring. But its not one of the options when I do menu config, the other DRM are there for Nvidia, etc... but not Vmware. I also tried to emerge libdrm and mesa, but ran into some use issues I still have to look into.

So I have a couple questions:
1. What determines what options are in the menuconfig? Is it the same for everyone? How much does it change from version to version of the kernel?
2. What drivers can be used with Vmware Player for graphics? lspci doesn't show a module/driver even on the livecd.
3. Are there any specific use flags which should be enable in make.conf when running Gentoo in Vmplayer?

Thanks in advanced for any help!

[NeddySeagoon]

gabeguss,

Welecome to Gentoo.

menuconfig has a lot of options. What you get to see depends on your ARCH and what is already selected.
In the simple case, turning of a menu, hides all the menu options too. In such cases they revert do a default state, which may not be all off.

In other cases, options will be hidden until the things they depend on are enabled. One famous example, if you turn off PCI bus support, anything that only makes sense if PCI support is enabled goes away.

If you really want to see all the options, use one of GUI config tools. xconfig, gconfig etc. They all have a menu option to show everything.

For Vmware, you set the graphics up as you do for a real install. Look at lspci, (inside vmware) see what the emulated hardware is and find its driver. Its likely that you want the vesafb driver, as thats the lowest common denominator and works with any hardware since about 1998.

Sight of your lspci output would be good as its been several years since I used vmware..
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

[gabeguss]

I can't get the exact output of lspci until tonight, but I know it lists the graphics adapter as "VMware SVGA II graphics adapter". I'm pretty sure I tried vesafb at least once. If there is not /dev/fb0 after boot, then the driver is wrong correct? Or do I need to do any additional steps to setup the frame buffer?

Since the config options are based on architecture, maybe the DRM vmwgfx is not available for amd64? I've seen it mentioned in many Google searches and is supposedly in the kernel since 2.6 or so. I might have missed some pci options which cause it to be disabled though.

I did get the xserver to work with the xemacs and twm as outlined in the handbook, but haven't installed KDE or another desktop. I emerged x11-drivers/xf86-video-vmware and set VIDEO="vmware" in make.conf as suggested by internet search. I'm still confused about the graphics drivers in general -- is the driver which is used for xserver, the same as a kernel driver/module? Once I get a desktop, I'll try the gui configs you suggested.

Thanks again...

[NeddySeagoon]

gabeguss,

There are two kernel options related to vmwgfx.

The kernel provides this information, along with my settings

[gabeguss]

Don't know how I missed the "/" search command. I guess I didn't really understand the scope of dependencies in the kernel configuration either. I didn't have FB turned on and so DRM_VMWGFX wasn't showing up. It's installed and working now. Thanks again!