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Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.announce,comp.os.linux.help,comp.os.linux.admin,comp.windows.x.i386unix,comp.answers,news.answers
From: geyer@polyhymnia.iwr.uni-heidelberg.de (Helmut Geyer)
Subject: Linux XFree86 HOWTO
Keywords: Linux, XWindows, XFree86
Summary: HOWTO on installation of XFree86 for Linux
Followup-To: poster
Approved: linux-announce@tc.cornell.edu (Matt Welsh)
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something is missing or something is obsolete or wrong, please let me know.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
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