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Path: bloom-beacon.mit.edu!hookup!europa.eng.gtefsd.com!emory!news-feed-2.peachnet.edu!concert!bigblue.oit.unc.edu!sunSITE!mdw From: geyer@polyhymnia.iwr.uni-heidelberg.de (Helmut Geyer) Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.announce,comp.os.linux.help,comp.os.linux.admin,comp.windows.x.i386unix,comp.answers,news.answers Subject: Linux XFree86 HOWTO Followup-To: poster Date: 16 Mar 1994 05:29:20 GMT Organization: The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Lines: 826 Approved: linux-announce@tc.cornell.edu (Matt Welsh) Message-ID: <2m65fg$4pg@bigblue.oit.unc.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: calzone.oit.unc.edu Summary: HOWTO on installation of XFree86 for Linux Keywords: Linux, XWindows, XFree86 Originator: mdw@sunSITE Xref: bloom-beacon.mit.edu comp.os.linux.announce:1957 comp.os.linux.help:26198 comp.os.linux.admin:5618 comp.windows.x.i386unix:8415 comp.answers:4187 news.answers:16456 Archive-name: linux/howto/XFree86 Last-modified: 10 February 1994 $Id: XFree86-HOWTO,v 1.6 1994/02/08 00:00:00 geyer Rel geyer$ Comments or suggestions on this HOWTO are very welcome, i.e. if you feel that something is missing or something is obsolete or wrong, please let me know. The Linux XFree86 HOWTO, version 1.6 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ by Helmut Geyer (geyer@kalliope.iwr.uni-heidelberg.de) with help from Dirk Hohndel (hohndel@informatik.uni-wuerzburg.de) and David E. Wexelblat (dwex@aib.com) This document describes how to obtain, install and configure XFree86[TM] version 2.0 for Linux systems. XFree86 is an enhanced version of the X Window System, version 11 release 5, with support for many versions of UN*X running on Intel i386/486 platforms, including Linux. It support a great amount of video hardware for these systems and includes many bugfixes beyond the MIT standard release of X. This document is intended to help Linux users install and configure XFree86 v2.0, which was released on 31 October 1993. It is furthermore intended to answer some basic questions about X and programs using X. Please read this file and the referenced documentation files BEFORE installing and starting XFree86. IF YOU ARE NOT CAREFUL, YOU MIGHT DAMAGE YOUR HARDWARE. This file comes WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY OF FITNESS. If you damage anything following these informations, you are on your own. For a complete description of the features and the installation please look at the documentation files and manuals that come with XFree86 (residing in /usr/X386/lib/X11/etc and its subdirs as well as in /usr/X386/man). The most important files will be pointed out to you in this HOWTO. Note that this HOWTO gives not complete information on setting up XFree86, but that you have to get the documentation files for XFree86 (from the file xf86-doc-2.0.tar.gz). Other man pages from the stock X11R5 distribution can be found in xf86-man-2.0.tar.gz. These manfiles come as sources for the nroff program. To read them you will need a working man program as well as the groff package for formatting them. Note that it is often required to read manpages, so you should install the groff package anyway. (I think it is no good idea that in many distributions this package is considered optional). New versions of this document will be posted to comp.os.linux.announce, as well as archived on sunsite.unc.edu:/pub/Linux/HOWTO. Contents: 0. Introduction - What are X11R5 and XFree86? 1. Supported Hardware 2. Where do I get XFree86 and what do I need to run it? 3. Configuring XFree86 4. tinyX - a package for systems with low memory 5. X related packages 6. Compiling programs that use X 7. Programming in X 8. Finding Information on X on the net Appendix: Some Questions & Answers Copying conditions & Trademarks 0. Introduction - What are X11R5 and XFree86? X11R5 is a windowing system for UN*X like operating systems. The X Windowing System is issued by the MIT Consortium (look at the X(1) manpage for more information) and is put under a very liberal copyright, that allows any use of source code provided that the original copyright notices are included. As X is THE standard windowing system for UN*X operating systems, there are a lot of applications using it (both free and commercial). XFree86 is a port of X11R5 that supports several versions of Intel-based Unix and Unix-like operating systems. The XFree86 servers are partly derived from X386 1.2, which was the X server distributed with X11R5, but many of them are newly developed. The accelerated servers that are the most important change since XFree86-1.3 are completely new. This release consists of many new features and performance improvements as well as many bug fixes. The release is available as source patches against the MIT X11R5 code, as well as binary distributions for many architectures. Note that while the source and installation trees retain the name 'X386' name (for simplicity of maintenance of the source tree), there is no connection between XFree86 and the commercial X386 product sold by SGCS. The XFree86 Core Team maintains technical contacts with SGCS in an effort to keep user-affecting changes to the workings of the products from diverging too radically. There is no direct involvement of either group in the workings of the other. You will find more information on the XFree86-2.0 release and the XFree86 project in the file README from the documentation tarfile. 1. Supported Hardware As this is the most often asked question, this will be the first section. Currently XFree86 (Version 2.0) supports the following chipsets in the XF86_SVGA server (note that it depends on the chipset whether a card is working and not on the vendor, with Diamond notably excluded, cf. the remark at the end of this paragraph): nonaccelerated chipsets: Tseng ET3000, ET4000AX, ET4000/W32 Western Digital/Paradise PVGA1 Western Digital WD90C00, WD90C10, WD90C11, WD90C30 Genoa GVGA Trident TVGA8800CS, TVGA8900B, TVGA8900C, TVGA8900CL, TVGA9000 ATI 28800-4, 28800-5, 28800-a NCR 77C22, 77C22E Cirrus Logic GLGD5420, CLGD5422, CLGD5424, CLGD6205, CLGD6215, CLGD6225, CLGD6235 Compaq AVGA (cf the question in the appendix) OAK OTI067, OTI077 accelerated chipsets: Cirrus CLGD5426, CLGD5428 Western Digital WD90C31 NOTE that the WD90C33 chipset does NOT work with XFree86-2.0. These chipsets are all supported in 256 color (XF86_SVGA) and in monochrome mode (XF86_Mono) with the exception of the ATI and Cirrus chipsets, which are only supported in 256 color mode. Note that the ET4000/W32 is only supported as a ET4000 clone and none of the accelerated functions are used. The monochrome server also supports generic VGA cards (using 64k of the video memory as a single bank), the Hercules card and the Hyundai HGC-1280. Note that these drivers are not part of the XF86_Mono server by default. If you want to use these, you have to reconfigure your XF86_Mono server using the LinkKit (or, of course, the source distribution - but the LinkKit will need less disk space and less compile time). See the Appendix for further information on using a Hercules mono card. There is an (experimental) additional server that works on generic VGA hardware: XF86_VGA16, a 16 color server. XFree86-2.0 supports the following accelerated chipsets with seperate servers: S3 86C911, 86C924, 86C801, 86C805, 86C928 supported by the XF86_S3 server ATI mach8 supported by the XF86_Mach8 server ATI mach32 supported by the XF86_Mach32 server IBM 8514/a and true clones supported by the XF86_8514 server No other chipsets are supported; not Weitek P9000, not TIGA, not IIT AGX, not Microfield, not the new MGA chipset (as in the Matrox card), etc. Support for some of these will likely be provided in future XFree86 releases. TIGA will never be supported, as it requires licensing materials from TI (and may disallow source distributions); Microfield boards will never be supported, as they use proprietary and undocumented custom microcode interfaces. NOTE further: The following is a statement of the XFree86 Core Team concerning graphic cards by Diamond: All Diamond cards are NOT supported by XFree86 even if they have a supported chipset (with the exception of the Cirrus chipsets that have an internal clock generator). The reason for this is that Diamond has changed the mechanism used to select pixel clock frequencies, and will only release programming information under non-disclosure. We are not willing to do this (as it would mean that source cannot be provided). We have had discussions with Diamond over this, and they do not intend to change this policy. Hence we will do nothing to support Diamond products going forward (i.e. don't send us a program to run set their clocks). XFree86 DOES NOT SUPPORT DIAMOND HARDWARE. It is possible to make some of it work, but we will not assist in doing this. The author of this HOWTO does support this statement completely. If you have read this and bought nevertheless a card from Diamond, you will damage the idea of free software as Diamond does not support the efforts of a free X11 server. However, if you are stuck with a card from Diamond, there is a compilation of the needed things to get XFree86 running on some of these cards. It is called the Diamond-FAQ and can be obtained from tsx-11 or sunsite in the docs directories. Do not ask the XFree86 team about Diamond hardware. You will simply annoy them, and get no information. For some of these chipsets there are specific README files (to be found in /usr/X386/lib/X11/etc). If there is one for the chipset you use, read it!! In these READMEs the specific options that can be used to configure the server are explained. More information on the servers can be found in their manpages. Later more on configuring the servers. 2. Where do I get XFree86 and what do I need to run it?? This section is dedicated to the Linux binary distribution so all file names and site names are for Linux only. If you read this file and are not using Linux, you should get your hands on the announcement of XFree86-2.0 for you OS. In it you will find all necessary information on obtaining it. You can get the binary distribution of XFree86-2.0 for Linux via anonymous FTP from tsx-11.mit.edu:/pub/linux/packages/X11/XFree86-2.0 or sunsite.unc.edu:/pub/Linux/X11/XFree86-2.0 and all MIRRORS of these two. You can find an incomplete list of sites mirroring these in the BBS-list that gets regularly posted to comp.os.linux.announce or can be found on both sites in the docs directory. The distribution consists of several gzipped tarfiles (some are too big to fit on one floppy disk, you may have to split them): XF86_8514.tar.gz An accelerated server for cards using IBM8514 chips XF86_Mach32.tar.gz An accelerated server for cards using Mach32 chips XF86_Mach8.tar.gz An accelerated server for cards using Mach8 chips XF86_Mono.tar.gz A Monochrome server XF86_S3.tar.gz An accelerated server for cards using S3 chips XF86_SVGA.tar.gz An SVGA server (most chipsets use this) XF86_VGA16.tar.gz A server for 16 colour graphics modes xf86-svr-2.0.tar.gz All of the above servers xf86-bin-2.0.tar.gz Client programs xf86-cfg-2.0.tar.gz XDM configuration files and chooser xf86-fnt-2.0.tar.gz Fonts (all of them) xf86-kit-2.0.tar.gz Linkkit for building your own X servers xf86-lib-2.0.tar.gz Dynamic libraries, bitmaps and minimal fonts xf86-man-2.0.tar.gz Manual pages (both client + programmer) xf86-pex-2.0.tar.gz PEX libraries and sample clients xf86-prg-2.0.tar.gz Static libs, dynamic stubs, configs and include files xf86-doc-2.0.tar.gz Documentation and release notes for XFree86 2.0 xf86-doc2-2.0.tar.gz This file contains the manpage for Xconfig that has mistakenly been left out of the -doc- file. You will need libc 4.4.1 or newer to run XFree86-2.0. For the accelerated servers you need Linux 0.99pl13 or newer (a working complete mmap is needed for these). The SVGA, VGA16 and Mono servers will work on Linux 0.99pl12 and newer. Furthermore you will need to install David Engel's shared dynamic linker ld.so version 1.3 or newer. You can find the most recent version on all mirrors of tsx-11 in the /pub/linux/packages/GCC directory. You will need a main memory of at least 8 MB and a virtual memory of at least 16 MB (i.e. main memory + swap). It is possible to run X on a 4 MB machine if you take some precautions on memory usage (look at section 4, where a package for low memory systems is described). Note that you should nevertheless have 16 MB of virtual memory. (So if you have 4 megs of physical RAM, and 12 megs of swap, you're okay.) It is recommended that you have *at least* 8 megs of physical RAM, as swap is very slow. With only 4 megs of physical RAM, performance will suffer greatly. If you want to run memory-hog programs from within X (as e.g. gcc) you should at least have 16 MB of main memory and another 16MB of swap. You will need about 17 MB of disk space for the complete installation without LinkKit, 21 MB with LinkKit. By deleting those servers that you don't need and removing the LinkKit after linking your own server, you can save several MB of diskspace. A more concise listing on the needed disk space and the contents of the distribution files can be found in the release notes by Simon Cooper. These can be found in the 00README file residing in the XFree86-2.0 directory. Before installing XFree86, you should make a backup of all files that you changed. They may not be usable, but they still hold a lot of information you might want to preserve. (This includes your old XConfig files.) To install the binary distribution you have to do the following as root in the / directory with all needed tarfiles from above. To get all permission right you should use umask 022. gzip -dc tarfilename | tar xvvof - WARNING: This will overwrite all files from an older XFree86 version, of course not the Xconfig file (if you did not link it to Xconfig.sample, which you should NOT do). In other words, ionly if Xconfig.sample is linked to your Xconfig, it will be overwritten. After installing it, you will have to set it up correctly to match your system. This is described in section 3. 2.1 What do I do if I want to compile it myself? This is explained in the INSTALL, README and README.Linux files coming with XFree86. You should do that, however, only if you want to have some special changes to the standard distribution, as you will need a lot of CPU time and disk space to do this. If you only want to change the configuration of a server, you should use the Link Kit, as this is much easier to handle and will not need that much resources by far. For adding drivers to the SVGA server you will only need the Link Kit. The Link Kit comes with documentation on writing drivers for SVGA. You can find it in the directory /usr/X386/lib/Server/VGADriverDoc. 3. Configuring XFree86 From version 2.0 on all documentation files for XFree86 are combined in one tarfile, xf86-doc-2.0.tar.gz. You have to get this file and look through those files to configure XFree86 correctly. The following steps are intended as a guide to these files. There is a very good introduction to configuring XFree86 in the README.Config coming with XFree86-2.0. Start there to configure XFree86 and follow the instructions step by step. Furthermore you MUST read the manpages for Xconfig, XFree86 and the server you want to set up (one of XF86_SVGA, XF86_Mono, XF86_VGA16, XF86_S3, XF86_Mach8, XF86_Mach32 or XF86_8514). Just look in section 1, which server supports the chipset of your graphic card and use this. If you are not sure, which chipset your graphic card has (this should only happen, if you do not have a manual for your card), you can try to identify it by running SuperProbe, a graphic hardware detection program that comes with XFree86-2.0. You should, however, rely on the information of your manuals and not on that of SuperProbe (even if it is in most cases correct). Note that if SuperProbe does not detect your chipset correctly, the XFree86 servers will neither. Note further that SuperProbe detects far more hardware than XFree86 servers support. There is a list of accelerated graphic cards that are reported to work with XFree86-2.0 in the file AccelCards. Look through it to see, whether your card is already in the database. While other boards not listed may well work, The XFree86 team gives no assurances of that. If you were running XS3, you should take a look at README.XS3, as some things did change while incorporating the XS3 server into XFree86. Several people reported problems with the XFree86 configuration that could be solved by changing the BIOS configuration of shadowing and cacheable areas. The reports which settings had to be changed in order to get XFree86 working were partly contradicting, though. Due to this fact, I only want to mention that there might be problems arising from BIOS setup. If you cannot get it working in spite of having followed all hints in the documentation, you might want to fiddle with these settings. For configuring you will need the following information on your system: 1. The specifications of your monitor (i.e. which vertical and horizontal frequences can it handle and which video bandwidth has it). This is the most important thing of all as you can toast your monitor using incorrect video modes and you will need these specifications to check the modes. 2. You need the name of the chipset (confer the remarks above). Note that there are some companies using "s3" as a synonym for "accelerated" chipset, so this is often not true. Please check it out in your manuals. 3. Amount of video memory supplied by your card (this is usually detected Correctly, but it is better to have the exact number and compare it with the detected) 4. Which dot-clocks are available for your card, or is your dot-clock programmable. This is the hardest part for the graphic card setup. How to obtain these is described in the README.config. NOTE: there is a problem with the clock probing code for the WD90C3x chipsets. Please run the XFree86-1.3 server to probe for the clocks and put these into your Xconfig file. Having done that, you can use the XFree86-2.0 server. NOTE: If your RAMDAC can handle pixel clocks higher than 110MHz, it is probably one of the more recent high-end RAMDACs. As all of these (as far as it is known) use special features to make this possible, these RAMDACs should not be run at higher clocks than 85 MHz. Support for such RAMDACs (at least for some of them) will be in the next release of XFree86. If you drive your RAMDAC too high with the current code, you will fry it. So if you have such a card, do not use clocks higher than 85MHz (simply by not putting modes using clocks higher than that into the Xconfig file). 5. The protocol your mouse uses and the device it is connected to. The available mouse protocols are listed in the Xconfig manpage. You have to use the keyword according to the protocol your mouse uses and not the manufacturer,... The standard names of the mouse devices for Linux are: /dev/atibm for the ATI XL busmouse (NOTE: the ATI GU busmouse is in fact a logitech busmouse) /dev/logibm for the Logitech busmouse (NOTE: this uses the busmouse protocol, NOT the Logitech protocol) /dev/inportbm for the microsoft busmouse /dev/psaux for a ps/2 or quickport mouse NOTE: these are the new device names (as of MAKEDEV 1.2). Some distributions and systems have different device names: new old major minor device number atibm: bmouseatixl 10 3 logibm: bmouselogitec 10 0 inportbm: bmousems 10 2 psaux: bmouseps2 or ps2aux 10 1 The other supported mice are serial mice and therefore connected to one of the serial ports (named /dev/ttyS? or /dev/ttyS?? for Linux). For busmice it is sometimes not easy to see which device they are using. Simply put all drivers for busmice into the kernel you use and look at the startup messages. These will tell you, which busmouse has been detected. From these messages you can get the device name. So now procede as in README.Config. If your Monitor is not listed in the modeDB.txt file, you should try one of the generic modes. ENSURE THAT THE SPECS OF THE MODES ARE WITHIN THE SPECS OF YOUR MONITOR. If you want to tune these modes or to compute a mode of your own, you MUST read VideoModes.doc and follow the instructions there. Before trying a mode, compute the specs of this mode and again look if your monitor does support it. Here is no further description of computing VideoModes, as you should not do this without having read VideoModes.doc. WARNING: Do NOT EVER share Xconfig files with people who do not have EXACTLY the same Configuration (i.e. graphic card AND monitor). By doing this you could toast your monitor. It isn't so hard to figure out modes (that is, for multisync monitors) and you surely shouldn't ever use a mode that you didn't check by yourself to be within your monitor's specs. Even if you have exactly the same setup you should check all modes yourself before trying them. There are many people who run their hardware out of specs which may not damage their hardware but could yours. 3.1 Configuring the keyboard for non-US-layout If you do not change the standard settings, the server will start up with an US-american keyboard layout regardless which keyboard layout was configured for the kernel. If you want to have a different layout, look at the xmodmap(1) manpage. There are example Xmodmaps available at sunsite.unc.edu:/pub/Linux/X11/misc for several languages and keyboard layouts. Note that you might need to define a map for several special keys (as e. g. Meta, Compose, ..) in the Xconfig file to make complete use of these keymaps. For information on the keyboard capabilities of XFree86 read the XFree86kbd(1) manpage. Furthermore you should 4. tinyX - a XFree86 based package for low memory systems If you have not enough memory to run the stock XFree86 distribution, you might try to get this package. It is based on XFree86, so the difficult parts of the configuration (setting up the Xconfig file) are identical. To run it you need at least 4 MB RAM and another 8 MB swap space. There are now several tinyX versions, one for each of the different servers supplied by XFree86-2.0. Please read the above description of the servers to get the right version of tinyX. These packages are named like tinyX-YYY-2.0.tar.gz, where YYY denotes the server name (without leading XF86_) You can find tinyX on sunsite.unc.edu in the /pub/Linux/X11 hierarchy. Please look in your neighbourhood for a Mirror of it (cf. the BBS-list that can be found on most linux sites). You untar it as root from /. After this you have to setup a Xconfig file as described in section 3. The documentation and READMEs for tinyX as well as most of the XFree86-2.0 documentation files can be found in /readmes. Read the XFree86 documentation files _before_ setting up a Xconfig file as they are required for this. The tinyX documentation includes a lot of useful information on memory saving techniques. You should follow at least some of these suggestions, as running X while swapping constantly is no fun at all :-(. If you are running out of memory your system will lock up completely (in many cases the only way out is to turn off power or to make a hard reset - both is very dangerous for your filesystem). So read these files before starting X so that this does not happen. As tinyX does not include all documentation available with XFree86-2.0, you might notice that you are pointed to a file that is not included. In this case you must get the rest of the documentation files (and perhaps the manpages, too) from any XFree86-2.0 site (cf. 2.). If you have enough disk space for that, this is highly recommended anyway. Note that XFree86 specific manpages (as the Server manpages,...) are not in the *-man-* but in the *-doc* files. 5. X - related packages There are a lot of packages that are related to X. I mention two here, because they have a great influence on the look-and-feel of X. - The xview3L5.1.tar.gz package This package is a port of SUN(TM)'s xview3.2 package by Kenneth Osterberg to Linux. It includes the xview toolkit, a set of extensions to X. It will give you the look-and-feel of the Open Look(TM) extension to X (many will know that from Open Windows(TM) from SUN). To install it, untar the tarfile as root in some directory (e.g. /usr/src), read the documentation that comes with it (most important the README and run the INSTALL script. Note that you need about 25MB free disk space to install it completely (with examples). This is partly due to the fact, that for some time all files are twice on the disk. After running the INSTALL script and removing the xview3L5.1 directory you will need about 11 MB (including all examples). If you do not want to install the examples , you will need about 9 MB. If you do not want to compile or program any program that uses xview, you can spare another 2.5 MB. For running Xview you will need at least 8 MB of RAM, better 16 MB. To run xview with XFree86-2.0 you should get the ld.so package version 1.3 or newer. - There is a port of Motif(TM) to Linux. This is commercial software, so you will have to pay for it. You can find an advertisement from Metrolink (the company that provided the port to Linux) on tsx-11:/pub/linux/advertisements. These packages provide different window managers than the standard twm that comes with XFree86. There are several further window managers that you can find on sunsite:/pub/Linux/X11/Window-managers. All these use different setups, so you have to read the documentation on the window managers to set them up correctly. There are a lot of programs available for X. Look through the /pub/Linux/X11 hierarchy at sunsite.unc.edu or at the usr.X11 directories of /pub/linux/binaries and /pub/linux/sources at tsx-11.mit.edu for many of them. 6. Compiling Programs that use X If you have the source code for a program that uses X11, usually it will be shipped with an Imakefile instead of a Makefile. What to do now? Run "xmkmf" in the directory that containes the Imakefile. If there is a hierarchy of directories with Imakefiles, you usually only have to run xmkmf in the root directory of that hierachy. You can configure the rest by typing make Makefiles. This will build the Makefiles in all directories in the hierachy. Then you should run "make depend". Don't be afraid if include files like stddef.h, varargs.h, ... are not found, they are gcc proprietary header files and therefore not in the standard include directories (the Imakefiles use makedepend, not gcc -M). After that you can make the program by running make and you can install it (usually in /usr/X386/bin) by running "make install", installing of the manpages is done by running make "install.man". Of course, before even making xmkmf, you should have read the documentation that comes usually with such packages. 7. Programming in X If you want to write programs that use the X Window System, you should get some books on the X Window System. Most Subroutines provided by X are documented in a manpage (residing in /usr/X386/man/man3), but these will not provide enough information on programming in X if you do not know some generals about X. There is a rather complete series on X by O'Reilly, called "The definitive Guides to the X Window System", consisting of many volumes (you will probably not need all of them). For more information check out the O'Reilly and Associates Catalog from anonymous FTP on ftp.ora.com. I suggest reading Volume 1, "Xlib Programming Manual", and Volume 4, "X Toolkit Intrinsics Programming Manual", if you are serious about writing X apps. As it turns out Xt (volume 4) is used for most X applications, and you only need low-level Xlib stuff (volume 1) for certain things. 8. Finding information on X on the net. For general X questions you should read the FAQ and the Xt-FAQ from the comp.windows.x newsgroup (you can achieve them from ftp.x.org in the directory /contrib or from rtfm.mit.edu in /pub/usenet_by_hierarchy/comp/windows/x by anonymous ftp). This is the newsgroup for general X questions. If you have questions on the XFree86 package and cannot find an answer in the documentation files (XFree86, Xconfig, XF86_* manpages or the README files in /usr/X386/lib/X11/etc) you may want to post a question to a newsgroup. The appropriate newsgroup for that purpose is comp.windows.x.i386unix, as this newsgroup is dedicated to the XFree86 system. If you have a problem with the server and want to post a question to this newsgroup, you should provide enough information for those that want to help you. It is no good idea telling: XFree86 is not working, what do I have to do? Here some things that should be included in all postings that are concerned with server problems: - which Operating System and which release of it are you running - which hardware do you have (at least bus type (ISA/EISA/VLB), graphic card (including chipset, video RAM type (D/VRAM), size and speed)) - a concise decription of the problem - a printout of the server startup (you can generate that by redirecting the stderr output) - the used parts of the Xconfig (It is NOT a good idea to include all lines commented out by a leading #, as this then will be the largest part of your post and most people will already know the copyright statements :-) Furthermore you should say what steps of trouble-shooting you already did (there are some mentioned in the XFree86 documentation files and in the Appendix). There are some other newsgroups that cover X related topics: comp.windows.x.apps - for X applications comp.windows.x.intrinsics - for X intrinsic comp.windows.x.motif - for the Motif(TM) extension to X comp.windows.open-look - for OpenLook(TM) and the xview extensions to X Note that some of these groups have FAQ lists that are posted regularly to the groups. As always with regular postings these can be obtained from rtfm.mit.edu via anonymous ftp. Please do not post X related questions to _any_ newsgroup of the comp.os.linux.* hierarchy. You will get better answers to your questions in those newsgroups dedicated to those questions, as nearly all those questions are not linux-specific. Appendix: Some Questions & Answers Q: I started X by running 'X'. I get the stippled background, but no window at all. What am I doing wrong? A: Running X starts only the server, no window-manager and no applications. The usual way to start X is running 'startx'. Q: I used XS3 up to now, what changed in XFree86-2.0 A: The most important things that changed, are described in the README.XS3 file coming with XFree86-2.0. Q: Is there support for 16-bit or 24-bit colour modes? A: No, there is only support for 1-bit, 4-bit and 8-bit colour in the moment. The 4-bit server is in addition in an experimental stage, so there are bugs and problems using it. Most of the known problems are mentioned in the manpage. Q: I have a Logitech serial mouse but it does not work with the Logitech keyword. A: The Logitech keyword is for older Logitech serial mice, more recent Logitech serial mice use the MouseMan or MicroSoft keyword. Logitech serial mice plugged into a ps/2 port use the ps/2 keyword. Q: My server is unable to find some of the fonts. A: First check that the directories in the font path in /usr/X386/lib/X11/Xconfig are named correctly and contain fonts. If that is the case, running mkfontdir in all of those directories may help you. Q: I have the problem that the fonts are not restored correctly after leaving X. My screen looks totally garbled. A: This is not yet completely resolved. There are utilities called runx , restoretext,... coming with svgalib (sunsite:/pub/Linux/libs) that help sometimes. Q: I had a normal SVGA card up to now with 1 MB of video RAM. With it I could do a virtual resolution of 1152x900 or 1024x1024. Why does it not work on my new s3 card? A: All but the most recent revisions of the s3 chips cannot use a line length of 1152, so a length of 1280 is used for this resolution. Furthermore the s3 server needs 1k for the cursor, so a virtual resolution using 1MB will not work. NOTE, that you will need some memory on the graphics card for font and pixmap caching if you want to get maximum performance from your graphic card. So the memory is NOT wasted, but will get you a great performance boost. Try running some font or pixmap specific mode of x11perf with maximal allowed virtual resolution (e.g. 1024x1023) and with 1024x768 and compare the results! Recommended resolutions are 1024x768 and 1152x800 for 1MB cards. The latter resolution leaves not too much memory to the font cache, so you will have a performance loss using large fonts. For normal use with fonts <= 18 points it should be OK, though. Q: I have a s3 card and it does not work properly. The screen gets distorted when dragging windows and it frequently locks up. A: First try to use options nomemaccess or nolinear. If both does not help and you have a s3 928, try specifying chipset s3_generic in your Xconfig. If nothing helps, it might be a incompatibility problem between your graphic card and your motherboard. Try to see if the card works in a different system, if you can get your hands. Q: I have a s3 Localbus card and the server cannot find a high memory area. Then it disables direct memory access. What should i do? A: There are some strange problems with Localbus cards. It is being worked upon. Put option "nolinear" _and_ option "memaccess" into your Xconfig file. This will enable to use the 64k aperture that is supported even for ISA cards. This will furthermore prevent the following problem: Due to a bug in the linear frame buffer code, the s3 processor is not reset correctly, once a large (i.e. >= 1024k) linear frame buffer is found. Thus the server will not work after that if it fails to find the high memory area until a hard reset is sent to the chip (i.e. even a normal reboot will not reset the system). Q: I have a WD90C3x based graphic card. XFree86 seems not to probe the clocks correctly. What can I do? A: Yup, there is a bug in the clock probing code in XFree86-2.0. It is not in XFree86-1.3. So run the XF86_SVGA server from 1.3 just to probe the clocks and put the probed clocks into your Xconfig file. After that the XF86_SVGA server from 2.0 will get the right clocks. The XFree86-1.3 package can still be found on tsx-11 and sunsite. Q: I have a Diamond Viper card. Why does it not work? A: In addition to being a Diamond product, this card is based on the P9000 chip by Weitek. This chip is not yet supported by XFree86, so you have only a chance to get it working with one of the generic servers (i.e. Mono or VGA16). You will have nevertheless the clock setting problem that prevents the other diamond cards from working. Q: I have a card with the Compaq AVGA chip. It does not work. A: Yes, the AVGA support seems to be completely broken in 2.0. Please get the SVGA server from the XFree86-1.3 distribution. This should work. Q: Are there some notes on tuning the performance of my X system? A: Yes there are. They are posted monthly to the comp.windows.x newsgroup and can also be found on rtfm.mit.edu in the appropriate subdirectory. Q: I want to reconfigure my XF86_S3 or XF86_VGA16 server using the LinkKit. After editing sited.def and running mkmf, make will not work. A: There is a little bug in the Imakefile for the LinkKit. You can either change the line 326 in the Imakefile from #if XF86SVGAServer || XF86MonoServer to #if XF86SVGAServer || XF86MonoServer || XF86VGA16Server || XF86S3Server or you can configure the XF86_Mono or XF86_SVGA server additionally for building. Then all will work. Q: I have a SPEA/Video 7 Mercury card. It is 928 based but I cannot get it working correctly. A: The Mercury uses a clock chip that is not yet supported by XFree86. So you cannot use it at the moment. This will (probably) be solved in the next XFree86 release. Q: I have a busmouse and am running selection. The server has problems with recognizing the mouse. A: Selection has some problems with busmice. XFree86 cannot open the mouse device if selection is running on it. So kill selection before staring XFree86. Q: The server dies with the message "Cannot find a free VT". A: XFree86 needs a free VT to run on. So if you have put a getty process on every virtual console in you /etc/inittab, XFree86 will not be able to start. I suggest to let /dev/tty8 (for kernel messages) and /dev/tty7 (for XFree86) free of a getty process. Q: Why is the XF86_Mono server not working with my hercules card, I thought this card was supported? A: The hercules driver (as well as the BDM2 driver) is not part of XF86_Mono by default. Get the LinkKit and you can include it. You will need about 4 MB free disk space and about 5 minutes for building the server (on a 486/30). No version of XFree86 up to at least 2.0 properly sets a Hercules mono display when switching to text mode (such as when you switch VTs or exit from XFree86). You will therefore also want to make a small change to the Linux kernel to work around this problem. If you have a kernel version 0.99.15 or later, you can edit the file "console.c" in the kernel source directory "linux/drivers/char/" by adding the line: #define CONFIG_HGA near the top of the file. Alternatively, you can add the line: bool 'Hercules monochrome display support' CONFIG_HGA y to "linux/config.in" (then do a 'make config'). Re-make the kernel, install it, and re-boot. This change to the kernel ensures that the Hercules display is always in text mode immediately after a VT switch. This feature is worth having, even if future versions of XFree86 do not have the text-mode switching problem. Q: I cannot get a working 1280x1024 interlaced mode on my S3 card. A: Yes, that's true. It does not work in the moment. Read README.late to fix it. Q: I have severe problems with getting a mode on my new (805 rev. D or 928 rev. E) S3 graphic card with pixel clocks higher than 65MHz. A: There seems to be a problem with some undocumented S3 registers that come with these new chips. It is worked upon and should be fixed in the next release. Q: When will be the next XFree86 release? A: This cannot be said at the moment. If a new version is released, you will hear early enough of it. Q: The server tells me that I cannot use a higher clock frequency than 80 MHZ (ATI Mach32) or 85MHz (S3 928). The docs of the card tell me that it is possible to do far more. A: This comes from problems with the RAMDAC code that does not support some RAMDACs completely yet. These are the RAMDACs for the ATI Mach32 cards and the Bt485 and its clones for S3 cards. Therefore the pixel clock gets restricted to sane settings. This will be fixed in the next release. There are other High-End RAMDACs that suffer from the same restriction. In general you should not use any clock higher than 85MHz if your RAMDAC can handle pixel clocks higher than 110MHz. There are a lot strange phenomena reported that cannot be handeled here. If your card has a switch for bus waitstates, it helps in many cases to put this to the 1WS setting. You should also look at the remarks above on setting some BIOS values. As many reports (especially on BIOS setting) are contradicting, you should try several settings. ------------------------- Copying conditions --------------------------------- Copyright Helmut Geyer 1994 A verbatim copy of the XFree86-HOWTO may be reproduced and distributed in any medium physical or electronic without permission of the author. Translations works are similarly permitted without express permission if it includes a notice on who translated it. Commercial redistribution is allowed and encouraged; however, the author would like to be notified of any such distributions. Short quotes may be used without prior consent by the author. Derivative work and partial distributions of this HOWTO have to either include a verbatim copy of this file or make a verbatim copy of this file available. If the latter is the case, a pointer to the verbatim copy must be stated at a clearly visible place. If you want to do either of the last possibilities, you should contact the author. In short, we wish to promote dissemination of this information through as many channels as possible. However, we do wish to retain copyright on the HOWTO documents, and would like to be notified of any plans to redistribute the HOWTOs. We further want that ALL information provided in the HOWTOs is disseminated. If you have questions, please contact Matt Welsh, the Linux HOWTO coordinator, at mdw@sunsite.unc.edu, or +1 607 256 7372. --------------- Trademarks ------------------- XFree86 is a trademark of The XFree86 Project, Inc. Motif is a trademark of the Open Software Foundation. SUN and Open Windows is a trademark od SUN Microsystems. Open Look is a trademark of AT&T. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Helmut Geyer geyer@kalliope.iwr.uni-heidelberg.de