Thursday, April 20, 2006

Black Screen after logout from Fluxbox

I use kdm and frequently (though not every time, almost) when I exit fluxbox into kdm, I get a black screen and the whole system hangs and pressing all sort of buttons (Ctrl-Alt Backspace / F1 / whatever) produces nothing. Apparently the workaround is to add to this file "/usr/kde//share/config/kdm/kdmrc)" this line:
TerminateServer=true

Or for gdm, this line:

AlwaysRestartServer=true

Got this from this website:
http://thinkwiki.org/wiki/Problems_with_fglrx#Hardlock_on_X_logout

Unicode and Locale

Running "locale" shows that my system is using something called POSIX. Changing my system locale to Unicode:
1. Compile NLS UTF8 into the kernel.
2. Check that the locale I want (en_US.UTF-8) is availaibe in "/etc/locales.build".
3. Enter this line
###
LC_ALL="en_US.UTF-8"
###

into this file: /etc/env.d/02locale

- Note that running "locale -a" will show "en_US.utf8" (Note lowercase and absence of hyphen. And I quote the sentences from the Gentoo Forums:

locale -a lists the encoding part of the locale in lower case without any hyphens but these instructions always use UTF-8. The reason is that while glibc understands both forms of the name many other programs don't. The most common example of which is X. So it is best to always use UTF-8 in preference to utf8.

4. Make sure that in /etc/rc.conf the line UNICODE="yes" is uncommented.
5. Run "env-update && source /etc/profile"
6. Sometimes certain error messages may appear when running certain programmes:
a.
Gdk-WARNING **: locale not supported by Xlib (GTK/Gnome app)
b. Qt: Locales not supported on X server
(Qt/KDE app)
- Make sure the current system locale is listed in "
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/locale/locale.dir"

The Gentoo Forum mentioned this: (But I still don't understand it, therefore have not done anything about it yet)

Where to set the environment variables is the next problem. Ideally every user on the whole system should use the same encoding i.e. UTF-8. However using a locale other than the "C" or "POSIX" locale for root is asking for trouble on Gentoo. The reason is that it can break emerges as the semantics of scripts etc can change.

The Gentoo way to set environment variables is to set it in /etc/env.d. The Desktop Configuration Guide suggests setting the locale there. But this doesn't support setting a different locale for root. Some suggest suggest changing the locale in /etc/profile. It is possible to set the locale differently in /etc/profile for root and other users as is done with the PATH environment variable. Otherwise you can set them in $HOME/.bashrc or $HOME/.xinitrc if you only want the locale set under X.



Wednesday, April 19, 2006

Ipod works under gentoo

Ipod works! Gtkpod and castpodder both work. Remember to "emerge eject" so that the command can be used to eject /mnt/ipod after unmounting.

Did a "chmod 4755 /usr/bin/eject" because normal user cannot eject.

Programmes on Gentoo

Programmes that I've installed on Gentoo so far: (after I've got xorg working)
1. kdm
2. Fluxbox (a must!!)
3. Firefox
4. xmms - for some reason Audio CD cannot be played
5. mplayer - must emerge with use flags: dvd dvdread dts
6. gtkpod
7. Compiling castpodder at the moment - hopefully it'll be ok

Others:
Installed some nice fonts and mouse themes

Gentoo!!

Finally got Gentoo working!! Yippee!

1. Got everything working and kernel booted nicely after half a day staring at Kernel Panic.
Note:
- Need SCSI emulation to get usb drive working
- Need to build in the network card in the kernel. Yes, I know ... Du-uhhh! I missed it during the first few times compiling the kernel.
2. Installed xorg
3. 3D-Acceleration, dri, drm glxgears whatever did NOT work with the radeon module although they did say that it should work with ATI RADEON 9200.
- Took many MANY times of configuring and compiling the kernel before it finally got into my thick skull that the open source driver just did not work.
- Finally installed the ati-driver. Voila... worked beautifully. Yes, I never learn...
- Remember to add :
###
Section "dri"
Mode 066
EndSection
###

so that normal users can use 3D acceleration also.