[Sussex] Installing Gentoo - more questions

[John D.]

Hi list,

where to start with my questions?

Erm, Ok, now that I've managed to get kde running under gentoo, I notice a few 
subtle differences, from the way it's presented.

In the kde control centre, there is an X configurator, and I thought it would 
be good to fine tune a few things.

my mouse, monitor and keyboard, seem to be set up properly, though when I look 
through the list, my graphics card is listed as being a generic nv. Yet I 
don't follow why, because when I check out http://www.xfree86.org/ list of 
compatible hardware it shows me

10de nVidia group
	0172 NV17 (GeForce4 MX420)

which identifies my graphics card exactly.

If I then look at my /etc/X11/XF86Config file and go to the Graphics section I 
can see

Section "Device"
Identifier "Standard VGA"
Vendor "Unknown"
Boardname "Unknown"
Driver " VGA"

Section "Device"
Identifier "geforce4 mx420" (which I think is what I've put in)
Driver "nvidia" (again, I've changed this from nv otherwise I can't see the 
screen as the "picture" area is corrupted and jumps about)
#Videoram 65536

Why does it seem to be showing 2 graphics devices?

Next, when I start gentoo, if I try and start kdm from my user account (as in 
run level 3), it tells me that only root wants to start kdm, I can't even 
start it if I su to root (I have to start it as root, and then when it "fires 
up" I get the option of logging into kde as either root or user)

How would I modify things so I start kdm automatically as user, because I 
suspect that otherwise I am leaving root access open at some level.

Also, when I tell it to reboot, the kdm closes down and before the system 
reboot's I see a long list of stuff (modules I presume) that modprobe can't 
do anything with, I'm suspecting that this is stuff that is checked 
automatically on startup, but I don't know how to be able to view it, so I 
can then ask what to do about it, or what, if any, I need to install (because 
if I open a console, I don't even see a usable bash prompt i.e. instead of 
something like john at thepc john $ I get bash 2.0-5b$ - or # if I try as root) 
so I think that the console is doing something entirely different from what I 
see when the system starts at level 3?

Any idea's please ?

regards

John D.