X and Fluxbox :: All the colors are off!

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As to compiling the Xi810 for DSL, John Andrews from DSL tells me that he compiled the Kdrive Xi810 from source several times under DSL and never got it to work.

Looks like you got your answer.

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One thing I noticed was that in Feather, in the .xserverrc file, the "-nolisten tcp" option that one finds with DSL is omitted.

I posted that is not OMITTED. It is our opinon not a good idea and not needed by most users and why.

We cannot possible have available all hardware on which to develop. People have sent alot of time here trying to be helpful to you.. You seem to have an agenda. We get it! So, if you like a color depth of 8, go for it.

This thread has become so long that most of the facts have probably evaporated in the mind of the casual reader. Because of that I'd like to briefly summarize what has or has not been accomplished so far.

I have a budget Dell desktop with an Intel i845 graphics chipset integrated in the motherboard. I believe that DSL is a great Linux distro and that it would perfectly serve as a lean and mean learning distro that would allow you to get under the hood and work close to the system level. Since that is what I'm looking for, I've spent countless hours trying to get it to work on my hardware, for my own benefit as well as for the benefit of everybody else who uses that chipset or other members of that chipset family which can be found in tens of thousands of recent machines. This graphics hardware was introduced about two years ago, and it works without a problem with other full Linux distros under XFree86, at resolutions up to 1280x1024x32.

I also very much appreciate all the help I have received in this forum, in particular from cbagger. Unfortunately, so far we have not been able to find any video setup for the Kdrive X servers Xvesa and Xfbdev used by DSL that would provide usable X windows. The problem is that these X servers don't provide much support for the Intel hardware.

I also tested Feather Linux to see whether it had all the same problems as DSL. Feather is a close cousin of DSL, and in particular the X servers and video setup appear to be pretty much identical in the two distros, to the extent even of Feather borrowing the X Setup screens from DSL (with proper acknowledgement to DSL).

Imagine my surprise then when I finally discovered two video modes in Feather (of all the other modes - literally dozens - tested in DSL and Feather, with both Xvesa and Xfbdev, that did not work) that actually gave me a usable screen. They have the resolution I want (1024x768 or 800x600) but not the color depth I want (8 bit = 256 colors; I would rather like 16 bit), and they provide rather grainy images but at least the colors are finally right, and I feel I can actually work with those modes.

Imagine my surprise again when I then went back and tested these two modes on DSL and found that they did not work there. Given the fact that DSL and Feather are virtually identical in their X windows software, setup and configs, I would like to find out what the difference is that allows Feather to give me something workable whereas DSL fails in this regard. If this difference (which may well be a minor tweak) can be identified, then I might be able to get DSL to work for me as well. After all, Xfbdev supports these two modes on my hardware as is proven by the fact that Feather can run them without a problem.

If the needed tweak cannot be identified, then I'm just about ready to give up on DSL, and not only I would lose but potentially dozens or hundreds of people with an interest in DSL who have the Intel i810/845 hardware. I feel that there is a workable solution of this problem for DSL and that it is tantalizingly close. I would certainly be very happy if I finally get DSL to work on my machine.

Robert

RobF,

I don't have a copy of Feather Linux, but you should be able to verify if the xfbdev files are exactly the same or if they are different by looking at the timestamp and file size.

If you really want to be sure, you can copy one of the xfbdev files over to a floppy disk or a hard drive and use the "diff" command to compare them to each other.

Assuming the two xfbdev files are exactly the same, the only other difference that I know of is that Feather is based on knoppix 3.4 (newer kernel) while DSL is based on knoppix 3.3

The code for the frame buffer kernel driver could have changed between 2.4.22 and 2.4.26 so that is a possible difference.

You could wait until the next MAJOR revision of DSL (version 0.8.0) comes out and then try the same resolutions again to see if they work.

Otherwise, if the xfbdev files are different you could try copying the Feather file over to your DSL install and try it out there as a test.

The ideal solution would be to compile a working version of the Xi810 driver but this appears to be a difficult task. Maybe you can contact the author and see if he will send you a working pre-compiled binary file via e-mail.

If so, it would be easy for me to create a *.dsl extension that will allow the use of this binary file.

Good Luck.

Thanks, cbagger, for your suggestions and your offer of help.

I ran "diff" on the Xfbdev files from Feather 0.5.6 and DSL 0.7.3 - they are identical.

The .xserverrc files differ slightly for Feather and DSL:

Feather: exec /usr/bin/X11/Xfbdev -mouse /dev/input/mice,5 -logo -p 1 -I &>dev/null

DSL: exec /usr/bin/X11/Xfbdev -mouse /dev/input/mice,5 -nolisten tcp -I &>dev/null

I downloaded an older version of Feather, v.0.4.2 (from 5-15-04), which was the last version that still used Knoppix 3.3 and kernel 2.4.22. That version behaves in the same way as the most recent version, v.0.5.6, i.e. the two framebuffer modes VGA=771 and VGA=773 give me correct colors at 800x600x8 and 1024x768x8 whereas DSL fails to work with any fb mode.

My guess is that there are subtle differences in the default settings and startup scripts for X between the two distros that account for the difference. In my endless fiddling with servers, drivers and config settings for the two distros, I had a sense that DSL was a little more fastidious than Feather and failed more easily under identical circumstances.

Do you have any suggestions as to what else I should compare between the two distros aside from the Xfbdev files and the .xserverrc scripts?

As to compiling a working version of the Xi810 server for DSL, John Andrews told me that he had compiled the Kdrive Xi810 from source several times under DSL and never got it to work.

Perhaps the most viable solution to this problem would be to remove the Kdrive servers and replace them with a more recent X server that fully supports the Intel i845 hardware, such as the X.org server or XFree86. But that doesn't appear to be a trivial matter. It would involve taking out the Kdrive servers and then integrating the alternative X server and remastering the CD.

I've searched the DSL and Feather forums - nobody seems to have done this or posted any detailed instructions on how to do it. I do remember that somebody recommended to install the full XFree86 system rather than trying to scale it down (to save space) and in the process running into endless problems. If another 50 MB of space is needed to get DSL running - and looking good - on my system, so be it. I'm keeping it on a 210 MB mini CD anyway, so there is plenty of space left for a customized version.

Robert

original here.