[plug] Framebuffer problem

[Peter Wright]

Hi all,

I'm hoping that some of you might perchance be experienced at playing
around with the Linux framebuggffer, and might be able to offer a
suggestion to help me solve a puzzling problem I'm having with it.
Essentially, it's not working. :)

I have two machines that I'm (trying) to use to experiment with
framebuffers. One is 2.2.14, one is 2.2.15 (just freshly compiled).
Both were compiled with framebuffer support.


Now I'm attempting to use the FBDev XFree86 server on the 2.2.15
machine (running as root), and am getting the error:

open_framebuffer: failed to open /dev/fb0 - no such device.


This is despite the fact that there _is_ a /dev/fb0 device. I'm
running as root, so permissions shouldn't be an issue.

Having read through the documentation/howto regarding the framebuffer
device, I find that there is a program called fbset that you can use
to do stuff with the framebuffer. Download debian package and install
(on both machines), try running:


yoda:/dev# uname -a
Linux yoda 2.2.15 #2 Mon May 29 11:15:58 WST 2000 i686 unknown
yoda:/dev# ll fb0
crw-r--r--    1 root     root      29,   0 May 29 20:06 fb0
yoda:/dev# fbset 
open /dev/fb0: No such device
yoda:/dev# cat /proc/devices 
Character devices:
  1 mem
  2 pty
  3 ttyp
  4 ttyS
  5 cua
  7 vcs
 10 misc
 29 fb
128 ptm
136 pts

Block devices:
  2 fd
 22 ide1
yoda:/dev# 


Essentially the same on the other machine. The framebuffer _does_ seem
to be there, it _does_ seem to be active (in /proc/devices, no less),
and the /dev/fb0 file does exist, set to the correct major/minor
device numbers.

I'm bewildered. :)

Any helpful suggestions (before I go insane) received with great
thanks.

Pete.
-- 
http://cygnus.uwa.edu.au/~pete/

--
"The basic publication series for the IETF is the RFC series. RFC once stood 
for 'Request for Comments,' but since documents published as RFCs have 
generally gone through an extensive review process before publication, RFC is 
now best understood to mean 'RFC' "
 
  -- Scott Bradner (Open Sources, 1999 O'Reilly and Associates)