Hello!

I'm trying to get accelerated graphics on an Acer Aspire 1353LC
portable, running Debian sarge with XF86 version 4.3. The graphics on
this laptop is Via's S3 Unichrome.

from lspci:
0000:01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8378
[S3 UniChrome] Integrated Video (rev 01)

Now, there is some driver support for Linux at
http://www.viaarena.com/?PageID=296#km400
The root of my problems is that there is only support for Red Hat,
SuSE, Mandrake and Fedora Core. If there had been Debian support I
guess it would just be to download, install and voila so to speak.
However, even without explicit Debian support, Linux is still Linux is
still Linux, so I should be able to use these drivers anyway, right?

When running the "vinstall" install script (that comes with the
drivers found at http://downloads.viaarena.com/driver...00xf40039.zip),
this is the output:

-------- install start --------
install S3G KM400 driver
Which CPU do you use ?
1. AMD K 7/8

cp: cannot stat `///via_v4l_drv.o': No such file or directory
cp: cannot stat `///videodev.o': No such file or directory
cp: cannot stat `///via_drv.o': No such file or directory
cp: cannot stat `///via.o': No such file or directory
cp: cannot stat `///via_dri.so': No such file or directory
sed: can't read /etc/rc.d/rc.local: No such file or directory
cp: cannot create regular file `/etc/rc.d/rc.local': No such file or
directory
sed: can't read /etc/rc.d/rc.local: No such file or directory
cp: cannot create regular file `/etc/rc.d/rc.local': No such file or
directory
modprobe: Can't locate module via_v4l_drv
-------- vinstall end --------

After looking at what vinstall does, I saw that the reason for the
"///" is that the script tries to guess what distribution and version
I'm running by simply looking at the kernel version (it assumes I'm
running one of the four supported distr. mentioned above). Excerpts
from the vinstall script:

KERNELVERSION=`uname -r`
....
case "$KERNELVERSION" in
2.4.2-2)
OS=RedHat
VER=7.1
;;
2.4.7-10)
OS=RedHat
VER=7.2
;;
....
2.4.20-8)
OS=RedHat
VER=9.0
;;
....
2.4.21-0.13mdk)
OS=Mandrake
VER=9.1
;;
....
2.4.19-4GB)
OS=SuSE
VER=8.1
AUT OLOADFILE=/etc/init.d/boot.local
OLDAUTOLOADFILE=/etc/init.d/boot.local.bak
;;

and then later it does

cp $OS/$VER/$CPUTYPE/via_v4l_drv.o $VIDEODRIVERDIR/

Since OS and VER variables not being filled in, I get the "///" and
hence the cp installation errors.

So, I need to know what I should fill the OS and VER variables with.
Running "uname -r" on my machine returns "2.4.25-1-386", and the
latest kernel version supported is the 2.4.21-0.13mdk (Mandrake 9.1,
see above). But I don't know if my Debian sarge (installed with the
110 MB net-install Debian installer beta 4) is more similar to
Mandrake 9.1 than it is to for example SuSE 8.1.
I also need to know what to do about the other installation error
caused by the fact that "/etc/rc.d/rc.local" doesn't exist (see
installation output above).

If someone has tried doing this before, I'd be grateful for sharing
experiences. However, a Linux pro will probably know exactly what to
do after just looking at the vinstall script file. It's not a very
long script, so hopefully it shouldn't take long time

Thanks in advance

//Jonathan (sorry for the somewhat long posting)

In comp.os.linux.setup Jonathan <jonjo002@yahoo.com> wrote:
> still Linux, so I should be able to use these drivers anyway, right?

....usually...

> So, I need to know what I should fill the OS and VER variables with.

Isn't faster to recompile the modules and copy them into your
modules directory? Did you checked on www.linux-laptop.net for your
brand/model of laptop? maybe there are instructions
non-distribution-related.

Davide

--
| The notion of a "record" is an obsolete remnant of the days of the
| 80-column card.
|
|

Davide Bianchi <davideyeahsure@onlyforfun.net> wrote in message news:<2j7iblFuap1iU6@uni-berlin.de>...
> In comp.os.linux.setup Jonathan <jonjo002@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > still Linux, so I should be able to use these drivers anyway, right?
>
> ...usually...
>
> > So, I need to know what I should fill the OS and VER variables with.
>
> Isn't faster to recompile the modules and copy them into your
> modules directory?

Oh, and did I mention I'm sort of a beginner with X11, Debian and
Linux in general?
So, recompile what sources using what make-file, putting the modules
in what directory?

> Did you checked on www.linux-laptop.net for your
> brand/model of laptop? maybe there are instructions
> non-distribution-related.

Yeah, I've been surfing on linux-laptop.net/tuxmobil.org the last few
days. These are my experiences:

* There is one report in english/german (there is two additional ones
in spanish (one for the 1353XC), but unfortunately I don't read
spanish although I did try babelfish on a sentencer here and there )
from a person who has the same computer model as I (Acer 1353 LC). The
writer says:
"The VIA KM/KN400 is supported by the vesa driver of XFree86 4.x. In
XFree86 4.4 the via driver fully support this chip."
This would mean that I need XFree86 4.4 to be able to use the via
driver (and get accelerated graphics), right?

* By following a link from one of the spanish reports (I can read
those!) I ended up at http://unichrome.sourceforge.net/. A bit down on
that page there's a link called "Build" where it says:
"Contains various documentation and scripts useful for building
unichrome code for various distributions. This is currently limited to
the debian xfree86-4.3.0 branch."
This is the dist. and the XF86-version I'm running. So I looked at the
README you get to if you follow the "Build"-link. There it says:
"The xfree86 via driver works quite well on xfree86 4.3, so it is no
problem
dragging it into this and loading it for xfree86 4.3."
This sounds optimistic, saying that I can use 4.3 (since 4.4 isn't
supported by debian and won't be so, since they've chosen to go with
x.org). However, it still seems like I have to rebuild from source
(which will probably just get me into trouble), and then build the
driver separately. There are some source files along with an
"Imake"-file to get by downloading the "unichrome-X-r20.tar.gz" from
the project's file section. I guess this is the source for the driver.
However, I don't know what to do with the Imake-file.
There is a "Unichrome Mini-Howto" at
http://sourceforge.net/docman/?group_id=102048
But if you scroll down to "Checking out and installing the via driver"
in the Mini-Howto, it says:
"Make sure you have a build tree of XFree 4.4 or later, which has been
built once so all object files etc. are there. "
So, now I suddenly need 4.4?

* I could just download
http://downloads.viaarena.com/driver...400xf40039.zip,
(which I did), but as I wrote in my first msg, this easy-to-use
solution that (from what I understand) just includes running the
vinstall-stuff and making a minor change in XF86Config, only supports
Mandrake, Red Hat, SuSE and Fedora. So for this to work, I need to
know differences between different distributions or I'm bound to screw
things up

* On http://flaez.ch/dab/aspire_1315lm.html, there's some good info
for the 1315LM (which seem to have the same graphics as my 1353LC). I
tried downloading the "xf43sav-27t.tgz" from
http://www.probo.com/timr/savage40.html#download, and just copying the
one and only file that comes with the package, savage_drv.o to the
directory /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/drivers, as described on the
probo-page. I then put these lines in the Device-section in
XF86Config-4:
Driver "savage"
Option "DPMS"
Option "XaaNoMono8x8PatternFillRect"
Option "UseBIOS" "no"
as described on the flaez.ch-page. However, after these changes, I got
the error message when trying to run startx from the prompt saying "no
screens found".

So, I don't really know what to do. There are several paths that can
be taken, none without problems (big problems for a beginner)
I've spent quite a few hours on this already, but it means so much to
have accelerated graphics. The alternative is changing distribution or
going back to fulltime winxp, but I really like my debian system and
most of things work pretty good now, except graphics acceleration.
Any suggestion(s)?

> Davide

//Jonathan