building from source for dummies?

[Rahul Sundaram]

James Wilkinson wrote:
> Tom Horsley wrote:
>> I figure the first step is just getting the source rpm built so I can
>> verify I can build a radeon module that is equally broken as the one
>> that comes with FC6 (broken for my monitor, that is).
>>
>> If I can get that build to work, I'm sure I'll be able to apply some of the
>> patches mentioned in the bugzillas and rebuild to see if I can get it working
>> better, but mostly I know nothing about unpacking and building source
>> rpms (especially of kernel modules like video drivers).
>>
>> Here's my xorg bug: https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=8790
>> (with pointers to a probably related bug that has various patches).
> 
> For what it's worth, I was having problems with my monitor. It *is*
> perfectly capable of 1600 x 1200 x 75 Hz, but FC6 was refusing to offer
> that as an option. 
> 
> I found that the option
>         Option      "noddc" "1"
> in xorg.conf told FC6 to use the modes *I* specify.
> 

That usually means that autoconfiguration information returned by the 
hardware is wrong. You can file a bug report with the xorg log against 
the particular xorg driver in http://bugzilla.redhat.com. We can 
manually workaround this by default.

Rahul