although the intelfb framebuffer driver is included in the 2.6 kernel sources, it apparently refuses to work properly - i get an "undefined mode number" on whatever I set vga=... to in grub.conf. The maintainer states on his website that his driver "needs to be updated to work with the fbdev interface changes in 2.6.x and later 2.5.x kernels." Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: compile the intelfb framebuffer driver into the kernel (not as a module, as i have a LCD - refer to URL), specify video=intelfb vga=791 (or any other vga mode) as kernel parameters in grub.conf (or lilo) Actual Results: "undefined mode number" error msg Expected Results: switched to framebuffer mode Portage 2.0.51-r15 (default-linux/x86/2004.2/gcc34, gcc-3.4.3, glibc-2.3.4.20041102-r0, 2.6.10-gentoo-r4 i686) ================================================================= System uname: 2.6.10-gentoo-r4 i686 Intel(R) Pentium(R) M processor 1400MHz Gentoo Base System version 1.4.16 Python: dev-lang/python-2.3.4 [2.3.4 (#1, Nov 9 2004, 16:18:48)] dev-lang/python: 2.3.4 sys-devel/autoconf: 2.59-r5 sys-devel/automake: 1.8.5-r1 sys-devel/binutils: 2.15.92.0.2-r1 sys-devel/libtool: 1.5.2-r7 virtual/os-headers: 2.6.8.1-r1 ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="x86" AUTOCLEAN="yes" CFLAGS="-Os -mtune=pentium-m -falign-functions=64 -fomit-frame-pointer -pipe" CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu" CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xkb /usr/kde/2/share/config /usr/kde/3.3/env /usr/kde/3.3/share/config /usr/kde/3.3/shutdown /usr/kde/3/share/config /usr/lib/mozilla/defaults/pref /usr/share/config /usr/share/texmf/dvipdfm/config/ / usr/share/texmf/dvips/config/ /usr/share/texmf/tex/generic/config/ /usr/share/texmf/tex/platex/config/ /usr/share/texmf/xdvi/ /var/qmail/control" CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/gconf /etc/terminfo /etc/env.d" CXXFLAGS="-Os -mtune=pentium-m -falign-functions=64 -fomit-frame-pointer -pipe"DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles" FEATURES="autoaddcvs autoconfig ccache distlocks sandbox sfperms" GENTOO_MIRRORS="ftp://gd.tuwien.ac.at/opsys/linux/gentoo/ ftp://ftp-stud.fht-esslingen.de/pub/Mirrors/gentoo/ http://gentoo.tiscali.nl/gentoo/ ftp://ftp.join.uni-muenster.de/pub/linux/distributions/gentoo http://gentoo.mirror.sdv.fr" LC_ALL="de_AT@euro" MAKEOPTS="-j2" PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages" PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp" PORTDIR="/usr/portage" PORTDIR_OVERLAY="/usr/local/portage" SYNC="rsync://rsync.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage" USE="x86 X acpi alsa apm arts avi berkdb bitmap-fonts cdr crypt cups divx4linuxdvd encode esd f77 fam font-server foomaticdb fortran gdbm gif gnome gpm gstreamer gtk gtk2 guile imagemagick imlib ipv6 jpeg leim libg++ libwww lirc mad mikmod mmx motif mozilla mpeg ncurses nls nptl oggvorbis opengl pam pcmcia pdflib perl php png ppds python quicktime readline scanner sdl slang spell sse ssl svg svga tcltk tcpd tetex tiff truetype truetype-fonts type1-fonts unicode usb xine xmlxml2 xmms xv zlib" Unset: ASFLAGS, CBUILD, CTARGET, LANG, LDFLAGS
okay, i've taken a peek into intelfbdrv.c, so apparently, it actually HAS been ported to 2.6 - so it must be another issue
the intelfb driver is really weird. in 2.4 the vga= option was only used for the digital out (reusing initialization code used by vesafb that is scattered though the kernel to take care of things). This functionality is broken on 2.6 which restricts the use of that code to the vesafb driver. I assume other changes make it very hard to modify things to get the vga option to work. Thus, the intelfb driver is useless when digital out is required (like on laptop displays). All is well if you are using the vga output, just use the video=intelfb:blablabla style argument (similar to vesafb-tng and others). The reason why intelfb only works right with vga is that when it was written the author had no documentation on the digital output. Someone needs to find docs on the digital output or can figgure out how X makes it work. I looked into it a while back, but at the moment fb code is a bit beyond my skill.
Closing as there is no hope to make the vga= option work on 2.6 for intelfb
In fact, intelfb works on my laptop when compiled into the kernel and setting vga=791 (or any other vga mode) on kernel command line (at least up to and including on 2.6.12; on 2.6.13 it introduces a blank screen). And it works only when vesafb-tng is NOT patched into the kernel (e.g with vanilla-sources, or gentoo-sources with vesafb-tng patch manually removed). When vesafb-tng patch is applied to the kernel, then vga= option refuses to work and i get an "undefined mode number" error.
