Bug 145799 – Inst Guide needs HOWTO on ID'ing frame buffer settings

• Product: [OLD] Docs on www.gentoo.org
• Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

[Description arthur_torrey 2006-08-31 21:18:32 UTC]

In the installation guide, part 10a, there is a lengthy discussion of how to write the string needed to get the frame buffer setup to work in the console.  The information provided is good, but is missing a very important part.

Namely, How do you determine what settings to use on a given hardware configuration????  Resolution isn't that bad, as it's a question of how big your monitor is and personal taste, but how does one determine what color depth to use, and even harder, what to use for things like y-wrap and mtrr values?  Not all of us have detailed hardware documentation, and I suspect that some docs might not even mention the information.

While I'd prefer something in the document itself, If this is a difficult and lengthy process, it might work just as well if you had a pointer to some other document.  BTW, I've looked in both the wiki and the forums, and not found much of use either place.

[Comment 1 nm (RETIRED) 2006-09-01 04:06:27 UTC]

Well, we already provide mtrr settings in the handbooks.

Unfortuntely, this is part of the installation process that we just can't allow for the millions of different configurations out there. We can't determine what they are; this is why we repeatedly provide suggestions that the user check the forums and other resources to get help.

In all honesty, we don't know what setting each user will need, nor can we determine how to help each individual installation. It's not remotely possible to provide exact (or especially specific) suggestions for combinations of monitors, color depth, graphics card, chipset, motherboard, and so on. By necessity, all we can do is provide a very few pointers and then leave the rest up to the user to find out his/her own information. We can list some (hopefully) very safe, generic ideally one-size-fits-all settings, but as we state elsewhere in the handbook, users are expected to adjust suggested configurations for their actual system.

Every piece of hardware ever made has its own method of discovery, and unfortunately we can't provide many howtos to cover all of 'em.

As is mentioned elsewhere, you can gain a great deal of hardware information from a running Linux environment by typing "lspci" or "lspci -v" or "lspci -vv" to increase the verbosity of the information reported.