Nouveau driver issues

Question

I have a machine here I've been using for some testing, its an old athlon 1.2, 512mb ram, with a geforce 3, its on an MSI k7t266 motherboard, if any of that matters
I'm having some issues with the nouveau drivers with my trimmed down zen kernel. It works fine with the Arch kernel though, other than KMS, but I can't use that because of my KVM switch.
anyway, what I've done to get started here, is booted both kernels, and placed the logs from each into seperate folders.
now I'm trying to use the diff command to figure out what the arch kernel is doing that mine isn't.
essentially, i ran this
diff logs/kernel26/kernel.log logs/kernel26-zen/kernel.log >>difflog
but thats giving me too much info in the new file, any suggestions that might help me sort this out?
or is there perhaps a better way to do this, because diff at the moment doesn't seem like the best option. the logs differ right from the beginning? like this
Nov 19 22:09:21 myhost kernel: Linux version 2.6.31-ARCH (roo | Nov 19 22:05:01 myhost kernel: [ 0.000000] Linux version 2
Nov 19 22:09:21 myhost kernel: KERNEL supported cpus: | Nov 19 22:05:01 myhost kernel: [ 0.000000] KERNEL supporte
Nov 19 22:09:21 myhost kernel: Intel GenuineIntel | Nov 19 22:05:01 myhost kernel: [ 0.000000] AMD Authentic
Nov 19 22:09:21 myhost kernel: AMD AuthenticAMD | Nov 19 22:05:01 myhost kernel: [ 0.000000] BIOS-provided p
Nov 19 22:09:21 myhost kernel: NSC Geode by NSC | Nov 19 22:05:01 myhost kernel: [ 0.000000] BIOS-e820: 000
Nov 19 22:09:21 myhost kernel: Cyrix CyrixInstead | Nov 19 22:05:01 myhost kernel: [ 0.000000] BIOS-e820: 000
Nov 19 22:09:21 myhost kernel: Centaur CentaurHauls | Nov 19 22:05:01 myhost kernel: [ 0.000000] BIOS-e820: 000
Nov 19 22:09:21 myhost kernel: Transmeta GenuineTMx86 | Nov 19 22:05:01 myhost kernel: [ 0.000000] BIOS-e820: 000
Nov 19 22:09:21 myhost kernel: Transmeta TransmetaCPU | Nov 19 22:05:01 myhost kernel: [ 0.000000] BIOS-e820: 000
Last edited by ssl6 (2009-11-21 01:30:53)

Answer 1

i ended up using dwdiff i think it is actually, after doing pacman -Ss diff, looking for alternatives.
but after going throguh, and going over my kernel config for the zen kernel, i don't think thats the problem. because i have an almost identical kernel on another machine, which an Athlon XP instead of athlon, and a few different drivers since it has a different mobo, but i actually took the config from the athlon xp machine, and brougt it over to the athlon machine, and tweaked the drivers
they both have nvidia cards, except the athlon system has a geforce 3, and the athlon XP has an FX5950. the nouveau driver works on the athlon XP system, with pretty well the same same zen kernel. so what i did was swap the cards, and i can't get the nouveau driver to work on the geforce 3 with the zen kernel in the athlon XP machine either......but it can't be the driver support for the nv20's, because the arch kernel works....
there's got to be something i'm missing, I would submit a bug in the nouveau tracker, but i don't feel its really a bug, so much as a configuration issue on my part....or maybe something in the zen patch thats causing this?
but basically what happens, with the geforce 3 and nouveau driver on the zen kernel, is X will start, but the whole system locks up on a balck screen with a cursor, i can move the mouse around, but thats it, i can't switch to a terminal, or anything, the only thing i can do is hit the reset button
i think i found a bug report on the issue, or something similar, its hard to say, i'm looking at the comments, and it seems to go off track a little
https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3168
Last edited by ssl6 (2009-11-20 19:21:42)