Re: [gentoo-user] Weird GNOME problem [SOLVED]

[Michael Sullivan]

On Sat, 2005-12-31 at 18:02 +0100, Holly Bostick wrote:
> Michael Sullivan schreef:
> > On Sat, December 31, 2005 4:44 am, Rumen Yotov wrote:
> >
> >> On (31/12/05 01:49), michael@××××××××××××.com wrote:
> >>
> >>> Earlier tonight I changed the setting in /etc/conf.d/rc for the
> >>> RC_DEVICE_TARBALL from "yes" to "no" and rebooted.  Now I can't
> >>> get into GNOME.  For my personal account after I enter my
> >>> username/password the screen clears and I see the default
> >>> background color and my mouse pointer, then nothing else.  I can
> >>> move the mouse pointer, but there's nothing the click on and the
> >>> context menu doesn't come up when I right-click.  When I tried to
> >>> log in as root from the welcome screen I see the "GNOME Starting"
> >>> box with the Gentoo logo, but it never goes on from that.  To get
> >>> out of both my personal account and the root account I had to
> >>> Alt+Cntrl+Backspace.  I got a Failsafe Terminal and looked at the
> >>> log files for gdm and saw this:
> >>>
> >>> (EE) GARTInit: Unable to open /dev/agpgart (No such file or
> >>> directory)
> >>>
> >>> There are five log files in /var/log/gdm; they all say roughly
> >>> the same thing, and their timestamps are consistent with the
> >>> times I tried to log in and got stuck.  I can't even find out why
> >>> it's looking for this file or how to make it stop looking for it.
> >>> Can anyone help me out here? -- gentoo-user@g.o mailing
> >>> list
> >>>
> >>
> >> Hi, Are you using a Nvidia video card? Reverting RC_DEVICE_TARBALL
> >> to "yes" should solve the problem but it's not a solution. udev
> >> isn't creating the /dev/agpgart file/link - check if it's there and
> >>  with what perms. Rumen
> >>
> >
> >
> > /dev/agpgart does not exist.  As far as I know I am not using a
> > Nvidia card.  If I was I think I would have a /dev/nvidia as well as
> > several other similar /dev files starting with nvid, but I don't...
> >
>
> "As far as you know"? Do you not know what video card you have in your
> box? This is not really a wise policy in general (not knowing what your
> hardware is), but especially not when running Linux.
>
> But anyway, here's the deal.
>
> AGPGART is the device representing your AGP bus, which bus (slot) most
> likely holds your video card (unless you have an onboard video chip, a
> PCI video card, or use PCI-E, which you might, but most likely do not,
> as the vast majority of systems in use today use an AGP video card).
>
> AGPGART is a motherboard resource, which is part of the kernel. What may
> have happened is that you upgraded your kernel at some point and did not
> enable agpgart in the kernel config, and/or did not enable specific
> support for your motherboard, but this was not noticed because the
> previously-existing device file was in the tarball you were using.
> However, when you stopped using the tarball, because the modules were
> not present in the kernel, a new device could not be created (because no
> module/driver was found to create the device necessary). This is, of
> course, all speculation, but I can't offhand think of any other reason
> that /dev/agpgart would not be created, other than that the module isn't
> loaded, and the most likely reason that that would happen is because
> there is no support in the kernel enabled. However, this could also
> happen because the module isn't explicitly loaded because either
> coldplug is not installed, and/or the module--if compiled as a module--
> needs to be in /etc/modules.autoload.d/kernel-2.* and is not there
> present, and/or the module-- if compiled directly into the kernel is not
> loading because the kernel itself does not have support for loading
> modules enabled. But these are all somewhat less likely than agpgart
> support not being enabled in the first place (which is itself fairly
> unlikely, but since you are not getting the device being created, there
> must be *some* reason that that isn't happening).
>
> What Rumen is talking about is a specific quirk of nVidia cards using
> the proprietary nVidia drivers, that the device must be created in
> local.start because the device is for some reason not created
> automatically (I don't have an nVidia card, so I don't know the
> details). There is also a specific quirk of ATI cards using the
> proprietary fglrx drivers, that agpgart must be compiled into the kernel
> as a module, but your xorg.conf must be specifically set to either use
> the kernel module or the module included with the fglrx drivers; the two
> are incompatible and the fglrx drivers may or may not work if you use
> the wrong one.
>
> The reason you can get into a failsafe GNOME session is because that
> uses the 'vesa' video driver, which is practically guaranteed to provide
> a basic display (it's basically like Windows Safe Mode, doesn't run
> anything except what you absolutely need to have enough of a session
> that you can fix whatever's wrong). However, a full GNOME session
> requires the driver specified in your xorg.conf to load, which it most
> likely cannot, because your AGP bus is not loaded, so X is unable to
> communicate with your video card (which is on the AGP bus, which is not
> accessible, because the device file does not exist).
>
> So what we want is to cause this device file to be created, which would
> mean that we have to know somewhat more about
>
> 1) what kernel you are using
>
> 2) how it is configured
>
> 3) what specific hardware exists in the system (which impacts the
> configuration of the kernel).
>
> For the time being, I would suggest re-enabling the tarball in
> /etc/conf.d/rc, so that you can have a fully-working system while you
> determine the status of Device Drivers=> Character Devices=>
> /dev/agpgart (AGP support) in your current kernel config, and the nature
> of your motherboard and video card, so that you know what the correct
> settings for your system actually need to be.
>
> HTH,
> Holly

I fixed the problem (at least in my personal account) by deleting a
bunch of .* directories under /home/michael.  I apologize for not
knowing what hardware I have installed on this system.  I don't know
anything about hardware.  I find my hardware works better if I don't
know anything about it and therefore don't mess with trying to improve
it.  I had this computer custom-built at a shop I trust, and I've
already seen one instance where a piece of hardware they put in claims
to be something other than they told me it was.  Still, they're the most
reliable shop I've ever found so I use them.  I don't understand kernel
configs, so I use genkernel a lot and make small changes to the kernels
using the config of the kernel I'm currently using as a base...

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