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Re: Why is setting up X so arcane?



On Thu, Jun 28, 2001 at 08:05:02PM +0100, Nikki Locke wrote:
| In article <[🔎] 20010628125854.C19417@harmony.cs.rit.edu>, D-Man wrote:
| > | 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.  
| 
| Tried both of these. Both locked my machine solid.

Maybe try the SVGA driver with no special features enabled?  Try just
a simple 640x480x8 and see if it is any better.  Don't try any special
RAMDAC/clock chip specs.

| > 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).
| 
| There were lots of modelines specifying these resolutions. The problem 
| appears to be that none of these modes matches the available 
| dot-clocks.

Hmm.  I have found that if I don't have a modeline I get the "no mode
named foo" message.  If it needs a different HSync of VertRefresh I
get "mode removed because vertrefresh out of range".

| > 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.
| 
| I would love to use vi to set the config file up properly, if I could 
| find the information I need to do so. I don't know what clock chip is 

'man XF86Config'  (works for potato, woody doesn't have such a manpage,
just use the potato one and the readme on the (few) differences)

| on my video card, and asking XF86Setup to probe it causes the machine 

I never probed my cards, nor specified a clock chip or RAMDAC.  X4
(woody) found my clock chip all by itself.  Currently I have an
SiS6326.  I used to have an ATI Rage LT Pro that I used with X 3.3.3
-> 3.3.6, both RH and Debian.  I didn't have to do much configuring of
it by hand with RH 6.2, but RH 7's installer couldn't get it right.  I
simply copied by (backed up) config from 6.2 to 7.0 and Debian without
any trouble.

| to hang. When the machine hangs, Ctrl-Alt-Del has no effect, and all 
| ssh sessions in to the machine go dead (no character echo when you type 
| stuff).

I guess your machine really was hosed if the 3-finger-salute didn't
work.  Perhaps it was just slow?  That is, maybe X is hogging all the
CPU (and/or other resources) trying to deal with the display and other
processes starved?  Maybe it is the hardware probing that hoses it?
Maybe the config utils are close, but no cigar, and you need to fix it
with vim?  I like to pick conservative values to start with and see
where it gets me.  Then pick more liberal values to try and get better
resolutions, etc, and see where the limit is.

-D



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