X won't start ATI Rage on Dell Latitude C600

[SxN]

Hi All,

I installed Gentoo on a Dell Latitude C600 laptop (kernel 2.6.18-hardened), and am trying to put a GUI (KDE).

My graphic card:

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# lspci | grep ATI
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Rage Mobility M3 AGP 2x (rev 02)

I gathered from somewhere that to use it, incl. 3d acceleration, I need the r128 module.
I built it, and autoload it, as it is confirmed by a nice green star, as well as by the second line of

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# dmesg | grep 128
hdc: ATAPI 24X CD-ROM drive, 128kB Cache, UDMA(33)
[drm] Initialized r128 2.5.0 20030725 on minor 0

In /etc/X11/xorg.conf I have a section:

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Section "Device"
        Identifier      "ATI|Rage Mobility M3 AGP 2x"
        Driver          "r128"
        BoardName  "ati"
        VideoRam     8192
        Option         "EnablePageFlip" "true"
        Option         "AGPFastWrite" "true"
        Option         "AGPMode" "2"
EndSection

Still, when I launch X, I fail:

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# startx
...
(EE) Failed to load module "r128" (module does not exist, 0)

"Module does not exist" puzzles me... It's there!

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# lsmod
Module            Size  Used by
...
r128            37781  0
drm             59327  1 r128
agpgart       25060  1 drm

and so are its dependencies.

Everything is very new version (latest or second-latest).

I'm lost. What should I try?

Thanks for your advice
SxN

[Katphish]

Did you build xorg-server with r128 support?

[SxN]

Thanks for your answer, Katphish.

I think/hope so. I did

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# VIDEO_CARDS=r128 emerge xorg-x11
# env-update
# source /etc/profile

(and don't recall if r128 was between double-quotes or not - I followed instructions on internet)
I also had included VIDEO_CARDS="r128" in /etc/make.conf.

SxN

[Katphish]

Yeah, that should pretty much do it.

What does

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ls -l /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers

show?

You don't need to load the DRM module manually. It should get installed when X asks for it.

I would switch the r128 to ati in /etc/X11/xorg.conf as ati is a wrapper and will pick the right driver.

If that fails, I would let Xorg autodetect everything and tweak from there:

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Xorg -configure

I would change InputDevice Device line for the mouse to "/dev/input/mice" and test the xorg.conf.

[SxN]

Hello,

1) The drivers directoy wasn't there, so I created it, and put inside a symlink to /lib/modules/2.6.10-hardened/x11-drm/r128.ko
2) I was autoloading r128; that in turn loaded drm. Should I take r128 out of /etc/modules.autoload.d/kernel-2.6?
3) I changed xorg.conf as suggested: ati instead of r128, mice instead of psaux. But how do I build the ati module? r128 was build when I configured the kernel, but I can't find there something for ati.
4) Without the ati module (but with the updated xorg.conf), I tried Xorg -configure. I blows up immediately and shows a backtrace in 8 steps: a library function call that performs a library function call that performs... and then "Fatal server error:\n Caught signal 11."

I suppose that I should focus on building ati. How do I start?

Thanks,
SxN

[Katphish]

1) these are apples and oranges. r128.ko is the kernel driver, the xorg driver directory is for X. The r128 that is supposed to be in the xorg folder comes from x11-drivers/xf86-video-ati-6.6.3. Do you have this emerged?

2) It is a matter of taste.

3) you are missing the above ebuild or it is damaged. Double check you have the above installed with dri enabled. I prefer mice over psaux as I use a USB mouse and the trackpad and can use both with minimal fuss with the mice setup.

4) Xorg -configure does not use any configuration file. It autodetects what hardware it can and uses logical guesses for the other and produces a test configuration. It instructs you in how to test this config file.

To get the ati drivers, emerge x11-drivers/xf86-video-ati-6.6.3 with dri USEFLAG enabled.

Good Luck

[SxN]

Hooray... problem solved (don't know how to mark it in the subject line)

The missing element was the right r128 driver. When I read the instructions on how to set up, I may have missed the reference to it.

Anyway, thanks a lot!

SxN