Re: X configuration

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On Sunday 20 October 2002 13:18, Matt Gerginski wrote:

> after a tedious install from the 1.2 cds.  Right now, however, I cannot
> get X configured correctly, it simply will not let me use anything
> higher than 8 bit color.  I've had both debian and mandrake on this
> machine, both using 16 and 24 bit color, and working fine, so I know
> the hardware is capable.  I am wondering if perhaps I should have

	I think you have just run into what I learned the hard way:  When you 
get a good XF86Config for your machine, make copies of it and hide them 
throughout your home (or /home :).  Print it out, have it framed, 
laminate it!  Seriously... I have the same problem on my laptop -- 
Mandrake and SuSE had great X configurations that worked fine, but I 
can't get OpenBSD's xf86config to generate the right modelines.  On my 
PC, Mandrake made a (very long) XF86Config that was nonetheless rather 
informative to read, even though it was for XFree-3 and Gentoo has 
XFree-4; I copied *one* Modeline into the Gentoo file and rearranged some 
of the "Display" sections and I was happy.

	I'm no Xconfig wizard, but you can learn a lot from reading the file.  
For one thing, I learned that the xf86config utility may have some broken 
data -- when choosing my monitor and video card, it left out the vertical 
refresh rates, so X declined to start!  

	Importantly, in the "Screen" section, you'll find such settings as 
DefaultColorDepth.  Note what it's set to -- is it 8?  If so, this may be 
why you're only getting 8 bits; changing that *may* help.  If it's higher 
than 8, such as 16, you'll need a "Display" subsection with a matching 
color depth.  Within this subsection, whichever resolution comes first 
will be the first one used.  Here's mine:

Section "Screen"
    Identifier  "Screen 1"
    Device      "Hercules Graphite Terminator Pro 64"
    Monitor     "My Monitor"
    DefaultDepth 16

    Subsection "Display"
        Depth       8
        Modes       "640x480" "800x600" "1024x768"
        ViewPort    0 0
    EndSubsection
    Subsection "Display"
        Depth       16
        Modes       "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
        ViewPort    0 0
    EndSubsection
    Subsection "Display"
        Depth       24
        Modes       "640x480" "800x600"
        ViewPort    0 0
    EndSubsection
EndSection

	Since the default color depth is 16, the display with this depth is 
tried first.  Within there, the first mode listed is 1024x768, so that's 
what I get first (I can cycle through the other two with Ctrl-Alt-+ on 
the numeric keypad).  *HOWEVER* it's very important to note that there 
must be an appropriate Modeline in the "Monitor" section just before the 
"EndSection" marker.  My monitor shows the horizontal and vertical 
frequencies in a little LCD panel, so I searched for a Modeline with that 
pair among the dozens in Mandrake's XF86Config, and came up with the 
right one.
	X11 will fall back to another depth or resolution if it doesn't have 
modelines that tell it what's OK to use; my first config had *none* so it 
was using some standard frequencies that gave me readable (but small) 
screens.

> driver for my video card, which is, respectively, and ati card.  Any
> help would be appreciated, I am really baffled on this one.

	Try plugging in your laptop model and "xf86config" on Google; doing that 
turned up some files to help me with my (very old) one.

Good luck!

- -- 
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