On Sat, Aug 15, 2015 at 12:04:32PM -0400, Steve Litt wrote:
> On Sat, 15 Aug 2015 07:43:04 -0400
> Haines Brown <haines@???> wrote:
>
>
> > I purged and reinstalled xorg without luck. Installed were
> > libglu1-mesa, x11-apps, x11-session-utils, x11-server-utils, xinit,
> > xorg, xorg-docs-core.
> >
> > The xorg log tells me that it is using as system configuration
> > directory, /usr/share/X11/xorg.c.
>
> What happens when you try it after manually creating the directory?

Let me start by noting that I'm unclear about the device configuration
file. On another disk on the same machine that I'm running devuan, there
is a Wheezy installation that has no no /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/ directory,
and off hand the configuration files in /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/
don't have a Device section. I also run Wheezy on another machine, and
it has a 20-nvidia.conf file with a Device section. I don't recall that
I did anything different for the installations, but nevertheless one
uses the nouveau module and the other must somehow use a default Section
definition.

I did as you suggest, creating a /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d directory and
putting into it a 20-nouveau.conf file with:

    Section "Device"
      Identifier "MSI NX 8500GT"
      Driver "nouveau"
    EndSection

For the Identifier I just put my card name as a guess. The Xorg log
shows that the nouveau driver loads and so I guess the Identifier works,
but not sure.

When I startx, I'm still in vesa (?) mode. The Xorg log file says it
is using configuration directory /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/ directory. The
only error is:

    (EE) NOUVEAU(0): [COPY] failed to allocate class

don't know what this means, and the Xorg wiki site no help.

I did a # Xorg -configure to create a /root/xorg.conf.new. It has

  Section "Device"
    Identifier "Card(0)"
    Driver "nouveau"
  EndSection

When I do # X -config /root/xconf.new, I'm taken to a blank screen and
I'm hung there and so have to delete the xorg.conf.new file and do a hot
reboot.