Re: Why is setting up X so arcane?
On Thu, Jun 28, 2001 at 01:45:31PM +0100, Nikki Locke wrote:
| I have a machine here I would like to run X on. I am not sure of the
| specs of the VGA card, and have no manuals for it. I think I have a
| manual for the monitor (it has no manufacturer marked on it, but I have
| found a single sheet of paper which has a picture on it that looks
| vaguely like the front on my monitor).
No problem, as long a you know a few things you can try out the rest
to see what works best. In a later post you gave the video card specs
that Windows told you. You need to know what kind of card you have.
You don't really need to know much about the monitor, just that it
works (it doesn't help when you have an old junker monitor that you
don't really know if it can handle high-res ;-)).
| I have experimented as best I can, and I have got an X display. It is a
| 640 x 480 window on a larger desktop, and is really difficult to use.
This is a start. At least you get something that is visible ;-).
| If I reboot into Windows NT, the thing displays 1024 x 768 quite
| happily.
|
| I have studied the stderr output of xinit, and it says
| (--) VGA16: clocks: 25.17 28.32 28.32 28.32
| (--) VGA16: Maximum allowed dot-clock: 90.000 MHz
| (**) VGA16: Mode "640x480": mode clock = 25.175, clock used = 25.170
| (--) VGA16: There is no defined dot-clock matching mode "800x600"
| (--) VGA16: Removing mode "800x600" from list of valid modes.
| (--) VGA16: There is no defined dot-clock matching mode "1024x768"
| (--) VGA16: Removing mode "1024x768" from list of valid modes.
| (**) VGA16: Virtual resolution set to 800x600
|
| Where do I go from here?
You are using the VGA16 driver here. Not too fun. Try stepping up to
the SVGA driver or even the S3 driver, since you have an S3 card. My
recommended technique is to use XF86Setup, or something, to get an
initial guess at what the config should be. Then 'vim
/etc/X11/XF86Config' and browse through 'man XF86Config'.
Sometimes various modes are removed because the HSync and VertRefresh
settings in the monitor section are too small for some of the
resolutions given in the modelines in the video card section. Just
keep tweaking those until you get the resoultions you want, then see
if they work on your monitor (they should if the monitor and video
card both support it).
The problem given above is that there is no modeline in the Device
section that specifies "800x600" or "1024x768", but you said you
wanted to use it in the Screen section. Use XF86Setup, or something,
and pick the SVGA or S3 card and you will get lots of modelines (a
good thing).
BTW I have had my machine "lock up" while trying to configure X.
Usually this happened if I swtiched between VT7 (X) and VT[1-6] too
fast. Then I would get nothing on the screen and pressing Alt-Ctrl-Fn
didn't seem to have an effect (the video card was hosed!, duh :-)). I
could, however, ssh in from a diff. box and kill X (it was at max CPU,
BTW) or press Alt-Ctrl-Del to reboot properly. (Interesting that my
potato box can't ssh into the woody box now, a bug for a different
day).
Summary : use 'vim' (or other editor) to setup the /etc/X11/XF86Config file
properly and use Alt-Ctrl-Del to reboot, not the power button.
HTH,
-D
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