As mentioned in another thread, I bought on of these for to use with one of my Pogoplugs (or my one dockstar). These are incredibly cheap & can be had on ebay for just a few bucks. (I paid $5). It's based on a SiS chip & I found some information indicating it would work, so I took a chance.
My intended use for it is to hook it up to the same pogoplug that does the IR-control for my AV rack. I have an older external Denon device which does streaming audio: it has a screen attached to it that I use to display "now-playing" images & current weather images grabed from the internet. The pogo-plug has an external sound "card" which does digital pass thru, so by adding a display to the plug, I will be able eliminate the old Denon streaming device.
The good news is, yes, it does work. The required kernel module (sisusbvga) loads automatically & simply speficying the correct video driver in a xorg.conf like this:
Section "Device"
Identifier "Tritton USB-VGA"
Driver "sisusb"
VendorName "sis"
BoardName "unknown sis card"
Option "SWCursor" "off"
Option "HWCursor" "on"
Option "CRT1Gamma" "off"
EndSection
I've also got my monitor setup in xorg.conf (found someone else's old .conf file that had used the same (old) monitor).
For the victim in all of this, I used my dockstar which had a fresh install on it (thanks bodhi) and an inexpensive Sandisk 32GB flash drive mounted inside the case (after removing it's huge plastic enclosure) knowing I would have plenty of diskspace. Plus it's faster thant the plugs.
I installed xorg-server, xdm & xfce4 and then every other little bit or dependencey I could think of or that was required. Then, the frustration began, starting with xdm. I couldn't get past the login screen. So, in an effort to debug, I start simply begain starting X with xinit.
Now, this is where some of the first issues came from & where some of the problem(s) may still lie. Since the display device is not active until X loads, you have no other choice than to startx from the command line in a remote xterminal. Skipping issues related to setting the DISPLAY enviroment variable, this present problems. Most importantly is to change the Xsession.options file in /etc/X11 to allow "anybody" to start an X session & not just console users.
Anyway, skipping ahead, here's the roadblock I hit & am still at after a solid day of dorking with it. (after disabling or removing xdm) I CAN start X remotely with xinit. putting anything in a .xinitrc file causes X to start, then immediately exit. trying to start an xfce4-session or simply start the xfwm4 results in the same. (a pretty much graceful exit). Having no window manager loaded, switching to a keyboard/mouse setup an the dockstar, I cannot start any graphical application from the single xterm. (I can run anything that runs inside that xterm of course).
I finally installed & tried the twm window manager & found it would load. With it runing I can start "xclock". However, that's pretty much it. trying start any other application causes X to exit. right-clicking with the mouse causes X to exit.
The latter caused me to look at the X setup regarding the mouse keyboard, so I went as far as copying the evdev file from /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d directory into my xorg.conf to be sure. No difference. (logs indicate it was not needed either)
So I tried it with a wired USB keyboard & mouse. Same behavoir.
At this point X produces not real useful information upon exit. the /var/log/Xorg.0.log has only:
[ 3158.933] (EE) SISUSB(0): Lost connection to USB device
[ 19441.744] (EE) Server terminated successfully (0). Closing log file.
All I know at this point:
I'm probably missing information that would normally be put into the .xsession-errors since I'm starting X remotely. The _ONE_ error that I can recall that is probably relevant & which I was never able to elminate was:
The display does not support the XComposite extension. xfwm4-WARNING **: Compositing manager disabled. Gtk-WARNING **: cannot open display: :0.0
The keyboard & mouse (though swapping the wireless for wired made no difference) are still suspect to me somewhat because of the immediate exit on a right click.
I have the "swapfile" utillity loaded (dynamic swapfile creation deal, I recommend it) & have also manually created a large swapfile and enabled it, so I am pretty sure it is not a out of memory situtation.
any advice on further debuging or insight into what the problem may be appreciated.
Dorking with all this xorg.conf reminded me of the bad old days of linux when it took a weekend to setup a sound card & good working .conf file for X was the result of many hours of work & was to be preserved at all costs. Man, I'm glad we've moved so far beyond that. My point being that it's been so long since I f*****d with the guts of X that I can't be sure I'm not missing something.
xorg.conf:
Section "Device"
Identifier "Tritton USB-VGA"
Driver "sisusb"
VendorName "sis"
BoardName "unknown sis card"
Option "SWCursor" "off"
Option "HWCursor" "on"
Option "CRT1Gamma" "off"
EndSection
Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "Tritton USB2VGA"
Monitor "Monitor"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Depth 24
Modes "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 15
Modes "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 16
Modes "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 24
Modes "1280x1024" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubSection
EndSection
Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Dell 1701FP(Analog)"
# HorizSync is in kHz unless units are specified.
# HorizSync may be a comma separated list of discrete values, or a
# comma separated list of ranges of values.
# NOTE: THE VALUES HERE ARE EXAMPLES ONLY. REFER TO YOUR MONITOR'S
# USER MANUAL FOR THE CORRECT NUMBERS.
HorizSync 31.5 - 79.0
# HorizSync 30-64 # multisync
# HorizSync 31.5, 35.2 # multiple fixed sync frequencies
# HorizSync 15-25, 30-50 # multiple ranges of sync frequencies
# VertRefresh is in Hz unless units are specified.
# VertRefresh may be a comma separated list of discrete values, or a
# comma separated list of ranges of values.
# NOTE: THE VALUES HERE ARE EXAMPLES ONLY. REFER TO YOUR MONITOR'S
# USER MANUAL FOR THE CORRECT NUMBERS.
VertRefresh 56 - 76
# 1280x1024 @ 72.00 Hz (GTF) hsync: 76.82 kHz; pclk: 132.75 MHz
Modeline "1280x1024_72.00" 132.75 1280 1368 1504 1728 1024 1025 1028 1067 -HSync +Vsync
# 1280x1024 @ 76.00 Hz (GTF) hsync: 81.32 kHz; pclk: 141.82 MHz
Modeline "1280x1024_76.00" 141.82 1280 1376 1512 1744 1024 1025 1028 1070 -HSync +Vsync
# 1280x1024 @ 75.00 Hz (GTF) hsync: 80.17 kHz; pclk: 138.54 MHz
Modeline "1280x1024_75.00" 138.54 1280 1368 1504 1728 1024 1025 1028 1069 -HSync +Vsync
# 1280x1024 @ 74.00 Hz (GTF) hsync: 79.03 kHz; pclk: 136.57 MHz
Modeline "1280x1024_74.00" 136.57 1280 1368 1504 1728 1024 1025 1028 1068 -HSync +Vsync
EndSection
##