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Setup TroublesSummary:
In many cases X setup is a snap. Since you are reading this page, I suppose this hasn't been the case with you. I will attempt to guide you along the possible ways to set up X, give you hints for further reading that may help you and point to further resources. PreparationsIt is always good to have some data at hand, here you might need the brand and chipset of your video card, the manufacturer name, model name and - perhaps - the frequency specs of your monitor. How to find out specsOf course the easiest way would be to have the relevant hardware docs at hand. If you don't have them, there are several ways to find out:
to find out more about your hardware. If the shell can't find that command, install it. It's part of the 'pciutils' package. If you need help with RPM, go to the RPM page .
Rerunning The X Configuration UtilitySometimes it just takes rerunning the X configuration utility to get a working X. Running this utility requires 'root' privileges. In Mandrake releases 7.x and later, you can use XFdrake on the console. For manual settings, try XFdrake ––expert If you've set up your system to boot directly into graphics mode, press the on the boot loader screen where you can select which operating system to boot. Then enter linux init 3 and press the key. This will boot your system to the console. In pre-7 Mandrake releases, use Xconfigurator If these don't work for you, try XFree's own setup utility xf86config for XFree 3, and xf86cfg for XFree 4. Now supply the values you've found out about earlier. Don't hesitate to choose suboptimal monitor refresh settings, you can tweak them later on . Finding Out About X Server 'Issues'If rerunning the configuration utility hasn't helped you, you should check the XFree documentation for your card. grep -i name_of_device This will list all files which mention your card. If it is not mentioned at all, you've either made a typo, used the wrong name, or your card isn't supported. The READMEs list the supported cards and options you may pass to the X server. Most servers accept options like "noaccel"
"no_bitblt"
If Your Card Is Not Supported By XFreeIf your card isn't listed in the supported card database or if it's listed but support is flaky, you have three more possibilities: getting a Linux driver from the vendor, using a commercial X server or using the framebuffer server. Several vendors are offering their own drivers for Linux. These drivers either add support for chipsets or allow you to use certain proprietary hardware features like 3D acceleration. Commercial X servers for Linux are offered by Xi Graphics and by Metro Link . Notice that since these are commercial products, you will have to rely on their support or find one of the few other Linux users who uses them. Xi Graphics' X servers are rather expensive. The framebuffer server is a generic X server which works for all cards which at least comply to the VESA 2 standard. As it is with generic servers, it's slow as molasses, but it should at least work with all post-1996 graphics cards. Read the Framebuffer HOWTO for more information. LogsTo get an idea of what's going wrong, check the log files like '.xsession-errors' in your home directory or '/var/log/XFree86.{x}.log'. X > xlog.txt 2>&1 Then kill the X server with . You will find a new file in your working directory with the name 'xlog.txt' which contains all relevant X messages. Common Errors and Fixes
>Whenever the XFree86 Xserver crashes, dies, ceases to exist or is inaccessible for any reason, you will see this error message. It is a message from an X-client (=any program running on your XFree86 Xserver, for example the window manager) telling you that it tried to connect to your Xserver, but failed to do something for "some" reason.
Make sure you have the X font server xfs installed (rpm -qa | grep xfs) and that it is running (service xfs status as 'root'). Have a look at '/etc/X11/XF86Config-4'. The font path setting should look like this: ~FontPath "unix/:-1"
Have a look at '/etc/X11/fs/config', the font server configuration file. Do you have all the font directories that are listed therein? Try putting a hash ('#') in front of some paths and (re)start the font server and X. If you have tried to add or remove fonts recently - either by hand or by using the '~DrakFont' utility, it might be that the font information files contain wrong settings. To solve this, you have to regenerate them using the 'mkfontdir' command. For more information, refer to Adding fonts to X .
at the boot loader prompt. This will boot the system to the console. Log in as 'root'.
and choose 'Generic VGA Monitor' from the monitor list. The reason behind this is to get a syntactically correct XFree86-4 file which you can edit later.
and then hit to save the changed file.
Related Resources:XFree86: Support, Documentation and Resources Revision / Modified: June 19, 2002 Legal: This page is covered by the GNU Free Documentation License . Standard disclaimers of warranty apply. Copyright LSTB and Mandrakesoft. |