Re: 5.0.1 boot messages: a few questions

[Anne Bennett <anne%porcupine.montreal.qc.ca@localhost>]

Well, I'm happy to report that thanks to the helpfulness of
the people on this list, my questions/problems are solved
enough for now.  Thank you.

A few hours ago I wrote:

> Things seem generally fine so far (I haven't installed any
> software yet), except for the resolution in X, but I am reading
> the boot messages as I always do, and I have a few questions:

I received one early answer offline which suggested that
I enable PCIVERBOSE in the kernel.  That added some good
information, but not for the acpi devices.  Of course, *that*
triggered the idea that I should enable ACPIVERBOSE as well,
which I did.  Then a couple more answers came in (thanks, Paul
Goyette, Magnus Eriksson, and der Mouse) much in the same vein.

> (1) How can I find out what these "not configured" things are
>    under acpi0, and whether they can or should be recognized?

With the extra information:

  ECP1 (PNP0401) [ECP printer port] at acpi0 not configured
  FWH (INT0800) [Intel FWH Random Number Generator] at acpi0 not configured
  FAN (PNP0C0B) [ACPI Fan] at acpi0 not configured

and still "bare", the "AMD AwayMode", um, thing:

  IELK (AWY0001) at acpi0 not configured

[ECP1]
Magnus> Probably the parallel (printer) port itself, since "ECP"
Magnus> is a related standard.

Yup!

> (2) "Stolen" memory?  What the hey?
>
>    pchb0 at pci0 dev 0 function 0
>    pchb0: vendor 0x8086 product 0x2770 (rev. 0x02)
>    pchb0: returns constant 0xff stream, RNG disabled.
>    agp0 at pchb0: detected 7932k stolen memory
>    agp0: aperture at 0xe0000000, size 0x10000000

I was going to write:
  Still puzzled about that, but xorg reports it as well, so I
  assume it's a technical term and not an accusation of theft.

but then I received:

Magnus> with AGP I think it's not that uncommon to see cards that
Magnus> "borrow" memory from the motherboard rather than carrying
Magnus> memory on the card itself,

Thanks.

> (3) Any idea what this unknown product is?
>
>    vendor 0x14f1 product 0x2f20 (miscellaneous communications) \
>      at pci1 dev 5 function 0 not configured

PCIVERBOSE supplied the vendor (Conexant Systems); I still
didn't know exactly what the thing is.  But:

Magnus> An internal modem?  Google says "SoftV92 Data Fax Modem with
Magnus> SmartCP", which sounds about right for "miscellaneous".

Oh, I'm impressed!  A trip under the desk with a flashlight
has confirmed that there's a modem installed, and what's
embarrassing is that I am the person who put it in there.  :-/

> (4) While thinking about my X resolution issue, I looked for the
>    kernel's information about my graphics card:

>    Why would "vendor Intel" have become unknown since 3.1.1?

Solved (PCIVERBOSE).

> (5) Not a question... yet!
[...]
>    Now I'd like to try again to get the highest resolution available,
[...]
>   "xrandr" shows only some relatively low-ish resolutions.

An explicit Modeline (obtained some years ago from running
a Knoppix on-CD distribution!) along with PreferredMode have
*finally* solved that problem!

Anne.