SDL and Vesafb problems

Folks

I’m trying to write my first SDL-based program. I am using the vesafb in
640x480, 24bit mode and whenever my simple SDL program does an
SDL_Init(SDL_INIT_VIDEO) I get an error on the console:

Vesafb does not support changing the video mode

and my program seems to hang at that point. Later in the program the code
does call SDL_SetVideoMode to set the resolution and colour depth but
obviously with the Init failing it never gets to this portion of the code.

Suggestions?

I’m using SDL 1.1.3 with a 2.3.39 kernel.–
Dermot Bradley
@Dermot_Bradley, bradley at debian.org