I've installed the mga driver in my /etc/X11/XF86Setup file. My card is a G450. There is an error message re. mga_hal module not found. The server operates at 1600x1200 at 16 bits, but leaves colour/window trails often, when windows are dragged from place to place. I've not seem this behaviour with the other XFree86 servers I've used (i.e. OpenBSD and Debian Linux) Thanks in advance.
Have you tried 4.2.1 yet ?
The Matrox HAL library is a proprietary binary library to enable DualHead on the G400 and G200, TV out, and digital flat panel support. Information and the license can be found at http://www.matrox.com/mga. The files can be downloaded at ftp://ftp.matrox.com/pub/mga/archive/linux/2001/beta_1_3_0/. According to the readme found at the above FTP site, the DualHead support is now opensource for the G450 in this driver, but not the G200 and G400, they still require the binary library. The G450 can use the HAL module if it is present and if support was compiled in. This may improve your stability. As far as I can tell the latest versions of xfree (4.2.1 and 4.3.0 in the current portage tree) still use this beta driver releasaed in May of 2001. I have a G400 that I use in dual head mode. To enable this I needed to compile xfree with the HAL module. I tried to use the prebuilt module available at the above ftp site and while it worked, it was very flakey. To use the HAL module, the only way I found was to include the mgaHALlib.a in the build. Download the driver.tgz to your distfile directory. You will need to edit the file /usr/portage/x11-base/xfree/files/xfree-4.2.1-r2/site.def and change the line #define UseMatroxHal NO to read #define HaveMatroxHal YES. Then add the following to your xfree-4.2.1-r2.ebuild file in the area where you find hunks commented as #Update Savage driver, #Update SIS Driver, and #Update WacomDriver: #Add Matrox HAL library to mga driver ebegin "Adding Matrox HAL library to mga driver" cd ${S}/programs/Xserver/hw/xfree/drivers tar -xzf ${DISTDIR}/mga-1_3_0beta.tgz mga/HALlib/mgaHALlib.a || die eend 0 Note: this only extracts the binary HAL library just in case someone has patched the driver elsewhere. The support for the HAL library will be built into your driver and the library will be compiled as a .o file and installed along with the rest of xfree. This fixes my bug for dualhead support for the G400 and G200 and I have tested this on xfree-4.2.1-r2 and xfree-4.3.0-r1.
Russell, did any of the advise (or a later version of xfree) sort this out?
So, Russell?
Closing due to lack of response.