Gentoo and Sony Vaio VGN-FZ180E – part 2: Video

This vaio comes with a Nvidia GeForce 8400M GT and is listed this way under gentoo:

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation Unknown device 0426 (rev a1)

It works nice with gentoo 2.6.24-r3 (latest stable kernel) by emerging nvidia-drivers. Since the most recent driver is still masked in portage, it’s need to add to file /etc/portage/package.keywords:

x11-drivers/nvidia-drivers

and then “emerge nvidia-drivers”. The version 169.2 will be installed.

WARNING: be sure that your kernel has the flags CONFIG_SYSVIPC=Y and CONFIG_UNIX=Y (Support for Unix domain socket. I don’t know why this two options are disable by default in the 2.6.24-r3 kernel)

To load the driver, “modprobe nvidia”

To instruct the X server to use nvidia libraries, use the command “eselect opengl set nvidia”. After that it’s needed to change Xorg.conf. Relevant parts is show below:

Section "Device"
Identifier "Device0"
Driver "nvidia"
VendorName "NVIDIA Corporation"
Option "AddARGBGLXVisuals" "true"
Option "UseEvents" "false"
Option "RenderAccel" "true"
Option "AllowGLXWithComposite" "true"
Option "TripleBuffer" "true"
EndSection


Section "Module"
Load "dbe"
Load "extmod"
Load "type1"
Load "freetype"
Load "glx"
EndSection

The emerge that installed the drivers also installed a nice utility under gnome, the Ndivia X Server Settings, that allow to change the brightness of the screen: