The Z-Issue - Computers

Problems with xorg-server-1.8.1 and xf86-video-intel-2.11.0

nospam@example.com (Zach) — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 10:38:26 -0400

For the past day or so, I have been working on a clean Gentoo installation on my Samsung NC10 netbook. Things were going along quite nicely with the rebuild using the testing (~arch) branch, including the initial installation of X. However, when I issued the lovely startx command, I was continuously getting:

(EE) intel(0): No kernel modesetting driver detected.
(EE) Screen(s) found, but none have a usable configuration.

Even though KMS was clearly set in my kernel, as evidenced by the output of:

# cat /usr/src/linux/.config | grep KMS
CONFIG_DRM_KMS_HELPER=y
CONFIG_DRM_I915_KMS=y

After fighting for several hours with different kernel configurations, rebuilding all X packages (xorg-server, mesa, video & input drivers), downgrading the Intel video drivers and xorg-server in various combinations, and even running env-update (for some unknown reason, but hey, I was desperate ), I decided to ask for some help. Josh (nightmorph) recommended that I run:

eselect opengl set xorg-x11

a couple times. I couldn't see what this would do, as I had set opengl already, and xorg-x11 was the only option. However, after running it a couple times, logging out and back in again, my X server finally started without error! Thank you Josh, and everyone else who made suggestions. I hope that this post helps someone else with the same issue.

|:| Zach |:|

Quick note to users installing ~arch KDE4

nospam@example.com (Zach) — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 12:10:09 -0500

Hello all,

As some of you may know, I prefer Openbox to the larger desktop environments. However, I went to install KDE4 today on someone else's computer, and ran into a problem with circular dependencies involving CUPS, GTK+, poppler, and cmake. The simple solution to the problem is to:

USE="-cups" emerge -av kdebase-meta

and then go back later and do:

emerge -avuDN world

in order to add in CUPS support.

This issue was actually discussed recently in this thread on the fora. I can't say whether or not this circular dependency problem will affect stable branch users or not, as I haven't tried to emerge KDE in such an environment. Also, if you don't have the cups in your USE flag declarations, you won't be affected by this problem.

Hope that helps someone.

|:| Zach |:|

Quick Openbox HOWTO update

nospam@example.com (Zach) — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 18:18:06 -0500

Just a quick update to let everyone know that I made some changes to the Openbox HOWTO in the documentation repository, and that Josh was blazing fast at getting it committed; thank you Josh! I addressed submenu delay that came with >x11-wm/openbox-3.4.7.2, and how to fix it in the rc.xml configuration file, updated the external links to reflect the change in the Openbox wiki, and provided an example of a menu item that links to an application with startup options.

|:| Zach |:|