[gentoo-amd64] video driver / system state question

[Mark Knecht]

Hi,
   I've been working on trying to get this new machine to run X. So
far no luck but I'm learning so it's interesting.

   My quick question goes like this - if I boot with no drivers I get
a VGA console. If I modprobe a frame buffer driver at boot time then I
get a nice looking but slow frame buffer console. All good so far.
However my graphics adapter is supposed to use the i915 driver and
when I modprobe that - either in auto-load or at the command like
after logging in - my screen goes 'black'. I'm wondering what I do -
other than look at what's in dmesg - to figure out what state the
machine is in. Is the screen turned off? Is the driver running and
putting out 'black'?

   What do I look at to understand what the driver is doing and what
the system thinks is the state of the screen before I start X?

   It turns out there are flags you can turn on to debug drm that show
me the system is finding my monitors and lots of mode line info, but
then the screen is black so it seems like somethings not right. Are
there any tools to query this sort of situation?

Thanks,
Mark