Barry, how did you get Xvesa to work with Puppy?

What features/apps/bugfixes needed in a future Puppy
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pakt
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Barry, how did you get Xvesa to work with Puppy?

#1 Post by pakt »

Barry, please let me give you a little background to my question first.

As I'm sure you're aware, Xvesa, and therefore Puppy, often doesn't work correctly with Intel's i810-family of graphics chips (these chips are quite usual in modern PCs and especially in laptops as they are cheaper and more power-efficient than add-on graphics chips).

Distros I've tested using XFree86 are able to support the i810-family with no difficulty at all. Just as an illustration, I'm writing these words using Kanotix (a Knoppix derivative) in 1280x1024x16 resolution on a 17" screen connected to a laptop with just such a graphics chip. Worked straight-out-of-the-box.

Contrast that to what Puppy offers on this same hardware: At best 640x480x16, excluding the terrible pseudocolour resolutions. At this resolution, most applications open windows that are larger than the size of the desktop, making the whole setup quite impractical.

OK, so what's my point? Well, I really like Puppy and I'd like to be able to run Puppy on my laptop. However, I've scoured Puppy's forum for help and posted messages about this problem with Xvesa. I've gotten some responses (including some from others in the same boat) but unfortunately no suggestions for solutions. I'm also aware that, due to size constraints, you haven't included other video drivers in Puppy.

Now, to what I really wanted to say, I found a reference to another kdrive server, the Xi810, on the internet. This sounds like a driver that was made to work with i810 chips. I'm not suggesting you include this driver in Puppy, but instead, make it available for testing with Puppy.

This may just be the solution that many of us with i810-equipped PCs are looking for. I would be happy to test the driver on my i810 hardware.

However, if the driver needs to be compiled first, I should point out that I'm mainly hardware-oriented and have very little experience in compiling under Linux.


Some questions:

- Is Xi810 available from the same place you got Xvesa?

- Would it need to be compiled to work with Puppy in a "Puppy compilation environment"?

- If so, could one of the developers compile it and make it available for download?

- Would it need to be re-compiled for new versions of Puppy?


Looking forward to your answers and eventually testing the driver in Puppy. :)

/Paul

oui

never more intel!

#2 Post by oui »

Hi paul

I did see you messages on the forum.
Years ago, I did buy not one but directly 4 PC's with the terrible chip for the reason they are "book-PC's" and kann be placed directly under the monitor and need no place more on the desk or in the room that I can't offer to my PC's. for a long time it was finish with Linux at home (with Corel Linux it was not possible to start the setup of the distribution because all was probably in high resolution mode!)... but it was the same problem with different other hardware i did have...

Today Mandrake move and Mandrake 10.2 works wunderfull on exactly the same PC; all functions excepted the old scanner and the wacom grafik tablett (but I did try only one time to setup the wacom driver because Linux problems are time killer no. one if something don't works properly) and we use Mandrake each day a lot of time. The only one problem is, that mandrake is a terrible big machine for quick daily usage. Start of Mandrake itself, start of OO, start of Firefox. Too heavy for 1 email and 5 row of text and one click on the weather pronostic.

I find that it is the actual problem of Linux at home and i find that the creator of BeatrIX also did recognise that (BeatrIX works perfectly well in high resolution with my i810's and starts very fast, recognise my router etc. what i personaly for the computer of my wife and daughter would need is a good mixture of puppy and beatrIX because beatrIX is a life CD oriented distribution)

i did buy last year a new laptop at last for me and verify don't to get an intel processor any more. never more intel in the life... for me it's fiinished! and our sohn did make the same... i am certain that intel did loose a lot of customers with the i810 and the desinteressment of her problem....

kindly

oui

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Flash
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Framebuffer in Puppy

#3 Post by Flash »

I don't know if this pertains, but Barry is including framebuffer support in the next version of Puppy. I googled "framebuffer" last night to find out what the heck it is (it has to do with the memory used by the display driver,) and vesa and i810 were mentioned several times. So, although the connection between framebuffer and various chipsets such as i810/815 is still unclear to me, perhaps the next version of Puppy will somehow make things work right for you.

For what it's worth, my computer has the Intel 815t chipset. The highest resolution Puppy's wizard offers is 800 x 600 x 16, although the monitor is capable of higher resolution, and does work at higher resolutions in Windows and other distros of Linux. At 800 x 600 x 16, some of the application windows are too big for the display.

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BarryK
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#4 Post by BarryK »

Okay guys,
I've compiled the Xi810 Kdrive X server.
It's attached, so download and uncompress:

# gunzip Xi810.gz

If you have Puppy running, at whatever resolution you can manage, copy Xi810 to /usr/X11R6/bin

then change X to point to Xi810:

# cd /usr/X11R6/bin
# rm X
# ln -s Xi810 X

Then exit to prompt, restart X by:

# xwin

...then let me know what happens!

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#5 Post by Flash »

Well, I think I followed the directions right. I had a little trouble copying Xi810 to /usr/X11R6/bin from the directory where I gunzipped it, using ROX. I finally opened two ROX windows and dragged it across. After changing X to point to Xi810, I opened rxvt and typed "xwin":

Code: Select all

# xwin
This script will run X windows for you...
Starting X, specs in /etc/X11/XF86Config, startup apps /root/.xinitrc...
.....pause for about 10 seconds, then:

Code: Select all

Exited from X.  Type "xwin" to restart X.
I don't notice anything different at this point, but I haven't rebooted or tried anything else. I wanted to let you know this much before I do, just in case. :)

Edit #1: When I run Start->Setup->Xvesa video wizard, the only option offered is 640x480x16, which is less than the 800x600x16 I now enjoy. When I click on the "More" button, I get:

Code: Select all

/usr/sbin/video-wizard: X: Permission denied
Select video mode from list, etc etc.
Awaiting further instructions before I reboot. I assume that if I power down the computer with the shutoff button, the changes will not be written to the pup001 file.
Last edited by Flash on Mon 20 Jun 2005, 01:09, edited 4 times in total.

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BarryK
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#6 Post by BarryK »

Yes, to avoid copying, you could download direct to /usr/X11R6/bin.

Okay, well you don't type "xwin" in an rxvt window.
You exit from X to the prompt, then type "xwin".

You may need to check the permissions on Xi810.
From the prompt:

# chmod 755 /usr/X11R6/bin/Xi810

If the new setup fails, you can restore things without X running:

# rm /usr/X11R6/bin/X
# ln -s Xvesa /usr/X11R6/bin/X

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#7 Post by Jesse »

Is it possible to scan the pci hardware to tell if a computer has the i810 or similar ?
If so, it might be a good idea to prompt the user to pupget the Xi810 server.
Also would be nice if /usr/X11R6/bin/X was a script to check for installed X810 server and if there is a 810 chip in computer so start that one instead of Xvesa.
Maybe a nice idea for future puppies.
Jesse

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Flash
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#8 Post by Flash »

BarryK wrote:Yes, to avoid copying, you could download direct to /usr/X11R6/bin.
Yes, that's what I did when it didn't seem to work right the first time, but nothing changed. :)
Okay, well you don't type "xwin" in an rxvt window.
You exit from X to the prompt, then type "xwin".
I assume you mean by using Ctrl-Alt-Backspace to kill the X server. Anyway, that's what I'm going to try. If you don't hear from me again... :oops:

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#9 Post by Flash »

Okay, here's what happened for me:

First I went through the procedure to point X to Xi810 again:

# cd /usr/X11R6/bin
# rm X
# ln -s Xi810 X

Then I exited X by doing Ctrl-Alt-Backspace. Figuring I'd save time I went ahead and did

# chmod 755 /usr/X11R6/bin/Xi810

before I did:

# xwin.

But it still did the same thing as when I tried to run xwin from the rxvt window: said it was starting X, then that it was exiting X, then to start X again by typing xwin.

I restored the original configuration per your instructions, which worked perfectly, then tried it one more time only without the

# chmod 755 /usr/X11R6/bin/Xi810.

It still didn't work, and this time, when I enered "xwin," it cycled through the "Start-Exit-Restart" error message about four times rapidly before it stopped.

I don't think I made any mistakes following your instructions, so I must have been mistaken about my hardware. I prefer 800x600 anyway; the larger type is more legible. It's just that so many newer apps are apparently written for higher resolutions and their windows are too big for 800x600. The way Puppy works now suits me well enough. I like it better than Windows 2000 or any of the other Linux distributions I've tried. I'm sorry to waste your time. :oops:

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#10 Post by BarryK »

Anything stored in /usr is actually in /root/.usr, so from the commandline you can go in there and delete anything to take it back to the original.

If running 800x600, which is what I run at mostly, JWM is good as you can easily resize big windows, such as the Gcombust window.

You might also like to try bladehunters experimental iso with framebuffer/i810 X support.

Jesse, yes, it would be good to autodetect and then suggest to the user to download another X server.

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#11 Post by Flash »

Thanks.

So many choices in Linux, each with its own learning curve! I miss my Windows. *Sniff* :twisted:

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pakt
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Re: Framebuffer in Puppy

#12 Post by pakt »

First off, many thanks, Barry, for making the Xi810 driver available for testing.

Now, for my experiences with the driver.

I had no problem in running the driver, just did the following:

# gunzip Xi810.gz
# cp Xi810 /usr/X11R6/bin/
# cd /usr/X11R6/bin/
# mv X X-vesa [I like to back these things up ;) ]
# ln -s Xi810 X

then did a Ctrl-Alt-Backspace to kill X, and executed
# xwin

Unfortunately, this just caused the screen to blink and returned the text "This script will run X windows...<snip>", then the # prompt.

Hmmm...OK, to get to the heart of the matter, I executed

# /usr/X11R6/bin/X

which resulted in:

Fatal Server error:
No matching cards found!

#

Oops! Looks like this driver is tailor-made to look for the original i810 chipset and it's not finding its signature (the Dell laptop has the i855 chipset which is derived from the i810).

New idea...test the driver on an old PC which has the i815 chipset (the successor to the i810). Here goes (keeping fingers crossed while typing):

# /usr/X11R6/bin/X

and this resulted in:

Fatal Server error:
No matching cards found!

#

@&!%#"%.... (creeping back to the drawing board)

Well, this seems to confirm the driver was tailor-made for the i810.

Perhaps someone that has a PC with this chipset can verify this.
Flash wrote:I don't know if this pertains, but Barry is including framebuffer support in the next version of Puppy.
Thanks Flash, I think I'll just wait for the next version of Puppy and see what happens. :?

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#13 Post by BarryK »

You could try bladehunters new iso -- it is announced in another thread, Announcements I think.

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pakt
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#14 Post by pakt »

BarryK wrote:You could try bladehunters new iso -- it is announced in another thread, Announcements I think.
Thanks, Barry. I've already contacted him about getting the iso.

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