[Sussex] gentoo - pre-install questions

[John D.]

On Sun, 21 Nov 2004 21:30:42 +0000, Stephen Williams  
<sdp.williams at btinternet.com> wrote:

>
> I had endless trouble with nVidia drivers at first. First, I would
> recommend the very latest. It's one package that fully justifies the use
> of ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~x86". Edit your /etc/portage/package.keywords file
> to ensure consistency.
>
> You will need to do:
>
> emerge nvidia-kernel opengl-update nvidia-glx
>
> Opengl-update should run automatically during this emerge, but run it
> manually if it doesn't (opengl-update nvidia). This will set the system
> to use the nVidia proprietary driver.
>
> Ensure the nvidia module is loaded:
>
> modprobe nvidia
>
> Edit your /etc/modules.autoload.d/kernel-2.6 file to ensure the nvidia
> module is loaded at start up.
>
> Once you do that, setting up xorg.conf is a right royal pain in the
> posterior. The /var/log/Xorg.log is the first place to look for
> problems.

Well, initially it looked like an nvidia driver problem - it was, partly.  
I ended up having to comment out the ZAxisMapping "4 5" line. for reasons  
that I don't follow, it kept telling me that the 4 wasn't a valid option.  
So I commented that out for the moment, and then just threw caution to the  
wind and did emerge nvidia. The version that the system didn't like was  
4496.1 (or something like that). the emerge seemed to cure something else  
as well. Although I had emerged nvidia-kernel, it didn't initially like  
doing emerge nvidia-glx. The updating (version 6111?) prompted me to also  
emerge opengl-update as well.

Since then the nvidia driver is starting correctly.


>> It says that I've got to
>> # emerge -n '>=sys-apps/portage-2.0.51'
>> # cd /etc/
>> # rm make.profile
>> # ln -s ../usr/portage/profiles/default-linux/x86/2004.3 make.profile
>>
>
> I find that carrying out instructions like this given by portage is a
> good way of avoiding problems.

Unfortunately, the system didn't like that either. The only way I  
eventually got the newer version of portage was to do emerge portage,  
which installed the newer 2.0.51 it had mentioned earlier, and then I did  
the rest of the # cd /etc/ # rm make.profile etc etc. I still don't  
understand what it did, other than make some sort of symlink (well thats  
what I think it's doing anyway)

>> Not that I understand what I'll be doing when I do that, but I'll have  
>> to
>> do it then try the emerge sync and the -upd world again and see what
>> happens.
>>
>>
>> Ha, nothing. So I've just done emerge portage, that seems to have  
>> worked.
>>
>> I'll post again presently.


Somethings happening in the right direction, because I'm now on package  
number 25 of 244, selected for update by emerge -uD world, which included  
the nvidia driver thing mentioned above and the xorg package, up to  
version 6.8.0 (it's currently telling me that it's doing gcc 3.3.4 ATM!).

I'll post if anything else strange pops up.

regards

John D



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