How to use fbdev ?

[Timothy Murphy]

On Sunday 29 August 2004 22:35, René Rebe wrote:

> > Someone suggested that I should try the fbdev driver
> > on my Sony C1VFK Picturebook instead of the ati driver,
> > but when I try that I get the error message:
> > "/dev/fb0: No such device"
> > although there are devices /dev/fb* created by
> > "dev/MAKEDEV -v fb"
> > creating eg
> > =====================================
> > [tim at william tim]$ ls -ls /dev/fb0
> > 0 crw-------  1 root root 29, 0 Aug 29 04:32 /dev/fb0
> > =====================================
> >
> > Where did I go wrong?
>
> No framebuffer support in the kernel? Try recompile the kernel with ati
> variants or the vesa one. You can also try the x vesa driver on the box
> directly.

I think I included all relevant options when compiling linux-2.6.8.1 .
I noticed that the atyfb module was not loaded,
but modprob-ing it (and restarting X) made no difference;
I still get the error message
"/dev/fb0: no such device".

I googled a little for devfb material,
but what I found rather puzzling is that the latest versions
of fbutils and fbset seem to date from 1999.
(I've no objection to running old programs,
but am I missing something more recent?)

-- 
Timothy Murphy  
e-mail (<80k only): tim /at/ birdsnest.maths.tcd.ie
tel: +353-86-2336090, +353-1-2842366
s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland