Xorg-Server-21.1.10

Kernel Configuration

The traditional Device Dependent X (DDX) drivers have been removed from BLFS in favor of the modesetting_drv driver which will be built as a part of this package. To use the modesetting_drv driver, the kernel must provide a Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) driver for your GPU.

If your GPU supports 3D acceleration and Mesa-23.3.1 provides a Gallium3D driver for utilizing its 3D capability, you should have already enabled the necessary kernel configuration options in Mesa Kernel Configuration. Otherwise, you need to find the kernel configuration option of the DRM driver for the GPU and enable it. Notably, the virtual GPUs provided by some virtual machine managers:

Device Drivers --->
  Graphics support --->
    <*/M>   Direct Rendering Manager (XFree86 4.1.0 and higher DRI support) --->
                                                                      ...  [DRM]
    < /*/M> DRM driver for VMware Virtual GPU                       [DRM_VMWGFX]
    < /*/M> DRM Support for bochs dispi vga interface (qemu stdvga)  [DRM_BOCHS]
    < /*/M> Virtual Box Graphics Card                            [DRM_VBOXVIDEO]

If the kernel does not provide a DRM driver for your GPU, on most x86 systems the 「simple frame buffer」 DRM driver running on VESA or UEFI frame buffer can be used as a fallback. Enable the following options in the kernel configurations if you don't have a dedicated DRM driver for the GPU, or you want to keep the simple frame buffer driver as a fallback in case the dedicated driver fails:

Device Drivers --->
  Firmware Drivers --->
    [*] Mark VGA/VBE/EFI FB as generic system framebuffer       [SYSFB_SIMPLEFB]
  Graphics support --->
    <*> Direct Rendering Manager (XFree86 4.1.0 and higher DRI support) --->
                                                                      ...  [DRM]
    <*> Simple framebuffer driver                                [DRM_SIMPLEDRM]

To allow the kernel to print debug messages at an early boot stage, CONFIG_DRM and CONFIG_DRM_SIMPLEDRM should not be built as kernel modules unless an initramfs will be used.

If you want to use the simple frame buffer driver on a system booted via BIOS (instead of UEFI), add the following line before the first menuentry block in the /boot/grub/grub.cfg file to initialize the VESA frame buffer:

set gfxpayload=1024x768x32

You may replace 1024, 768, and 32 with a resolution and color depth setting suitable for your monitor.

If all of these DRM drivers do not work for you and you need to use a DDX driver with a non-DRM kernel GPU driver (usually named CONFIG_FB_* in the kernel configuration, or existing as out-tree kernel modules), or you need an device specific functionality requiring a DDX driver, consult a prior version of BLFS, or an even prior version for more DDX drivers.