Howto: uvesafb on Debian (in my case… sid =D)

Hi everybody =).

A few days ago i installed gentoo on my desktop pc, and installed uvesafb without problems (thanks to spock for developing uvesafb and the instructions XDD, http://dev.gentoo.org/~spock/projects/uvesafb/ ). But now, in my laptop with Debian Sid (compaq v3417la) I didnt find any instructions about how to get it work with uvesafb. 2 hours ago, i could xD.

Mmm i think this will work too with debian-based distributions such the famous ubuntu.
Make sure you have installed kernel-package and patch.

sudo apt-get install kernel-package patch

First… get root privileges (i dont want to type sudo every time I need it jeje), download the sources (in my case that were 2.6.23.1 but there are newer versions =P), klibc , v86d and the uvesafb patch .

cd /usr/src
wget http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/linux-2.6.23.1.tar.bz2
wget http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/libs/klibc/Stable/Testing/klibc-1.5.8.tar.bz2
wget http://dev.gentoo.org/~spock/projects/uvesafb/archive/v86d-0.1.3.tar.bz2
wget http://dev.gentoo.org/~spock/projects/uvesafb/archive/uvesafb-0.1-rc3-2.6.23-rc3.patch

Decompress..

tar jxvf linux-2.6.23.1.tar.bz2
tar jxvf klibc-1.5.8.tar.bz2
tar jxvf v86d-0.1.3.tar.bz2

Make a symbolic link named linux which goes to the linux sources:

ln -s linux-2.6.23.1 linux

Now go into linux sources directory, patch your sources with uvesafb and configure your kernel:

cd /usr/src/linux
cat ../uvesafb-0.1-rc3-2.6.23-rc3.patch | patch -p1
make menuconfig

Before ending the configuration, make sure this options are included:
Device Drivers ---> Connector - unified userspace <-> kernelspace linker
Graphics support ---> Userspace VESA VGA graphics support

Now we are ready to compile our new linux kernel to the "debian way":


make-kpkg –initrd kernel_image kernel_headers

After some time, two packages will be created in /usr/src directory, install them.

dpkg -i linux-image-2.6.23.1_2.6.23.1-10.00.Custom_i386.deb
dpkg -i linux-headers-2.6.23.1_2.6.23.1-10.00.Custom_i386.deb

Reboot and start with your new linux kernel: 2.6.23.1 . After login, go to /usr/src/klibc-1.5.8 and install it.

su
cd /usr/src/klibc-1.5.8
ln -s /usr/src/linux linux
make
make install

“klibc has to be compiled against a kernel tree that includes uvesafb. You only need to do this once, i.e. you won’t have to remerge klibc every time you install a new kernel or a new kernel module.” I made a symbolic link to the linux source dir because it ask me to do, i don’t know if that step is neccesary.

Go into v86d source dir and install it (against klibc):

cd /usr/src/v86d-0.1.3
./configure –with-klibc
make
make install

Enter now to the linux kernel source and configure it again.

cd /usr/src/linux
make menuconfig

And now including this options in your kernel:
Initial RAM filesystem and RAM disk (initramfs/initrd) support
and use /usr/src/v86d-0.1.3/misc/initramfs in Initramfs source file(s).

Compile the sources to the “debian way”:

make-kpkg –initrd kernel_image kernel_headers

Reboot again using your previous kernel (the one you have been using before following this guide), uninstall the linux kernel 2.6.23 and install it again (now with the new deb packages created the last time).

su
dpkg -r linux-image-2.6.23.1
dpkg -r linux-headers-2.6.23.1
cd /usr/src
dpkg -i linux-image-2.6.23.1_2.6.23.1-10.00.Custom_i386.deb
dpkg -i linux-headers-2.6.23.1_2.6.23.1-10.00.Custom_i386.deb

Almost done! edit your grub config adding the uvesafb line to the kernel command line:

nano /boot/grub/menu.lst

It will be somewhat like this:
title           Debian GNU/Linux, kernel 2.6.23.1
root            (hd0,0)
kernel          /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.23.1 root=/dev/sda1 ro video=uvesafb:1024×768-32,mtrr:3,ywrap
initrd          /boot/initrd.img-2.6.23.1
savedefault

The bold line is what matters.

Reboot again with your new linux kernel and it will be using uvesafb! =D.
—–

Thanks to spock for the installation instructionsfor gentoo, and for uvesafb of course!.

Etiquetas: uvesafb debian sid ubuntu