The Linux XFree86 HOWTO
by Eric S. Raymond
v6.1, 21 April 2000
This document describes how to obtain, install, and configure version
4.0 of the XFree86 version of the X Window System (X11R6) for Linux
systems. It is a step-by-step guide to configuring XFree86 on your
system.
______________________________________________________________________
Table of Contents
1. Introduction
1.1 Other sources of information
1.2 New versions of this document
1.3 Feedback and Corrections
2. Hardware requirements
3. Installing XFree86
4. Configuring XFree86
4.1 Normal Configuration
4.2 Troubleshooting
4.3 Custom Configuration
4.4 Using 16-bit Color
5. Running XFree86
5.1 Terms of Use
5.2 Acknowledgements
6. Translations
______________________________________________________________________
1. Introduction
The X Window System is a large and powerful (some might say
excessively large and overly complex) graphics environment for UNIX
systems. The original X Window System code was developed at MIT;
commercial vendors have since made X the industry standard for UNIX
platforms. Virtually every UNIX workstation in the world runs some
variant of the X Window system.
A freely redistributable port of the MIT X Window System version 11,
release 6 (X11R6) for 80386/80486/Pentium UNIX systems has been
developed by a team of programmers originally headed by David
Wexelblat <
[email protected]>. The release, known as XFree86, is
available for System V/386, 386BSD, and other x86 UNIX
implementations, including Linux. It includes all of the required
binaries, support files, libraries, and tools.
Complete information on XFree86 is available at the XFree86 web site,
<
http://www.XFree86.org>.
In this document, we'll give a step-by-step description of how to
install and configure XFree86 for Linux, but you will have to fill in
some of the details yourself by reading the documentation released
with XFree86 itself. (This documentation is discussed below.)
However, using and customizing the X Window System is far beyond the
scope of this document---for this purpose you should obtain one of the
many good books on using the X Window System.
1.1. Other sources of information
If you have never heard of Linux before, there are several sources of
basic information about the system. The best place to find these is at
the Linux Documentation Project home page at
<
http://metalab.unc.edu/LDP>. You can find the latest, up-to-date
version of this document there, as
<
http://metalab.unc.edu/LDP/HOWTO/XFree86-HOWTO.html>
1.2. New versions of this document
New versions of the Linux XFree86 HOWTO will be periodically posted to
comp.os.linux.help and and news.answers <news:news.answers>. They
will also be uploaded to various Linux WWW and FTP sites, including
the LDP home page.
You can always view the latest version of this on the World Wide Web
via the URL <
http://metalab.unc.edu/LDP/HOWTO/XFree86-HOWTO.html>.
1.3. Feedback and Corrections
If you have questions or comments about this document, please feel
free to mail Eric S. Raymond, at
[email protected]. I welcome any
suggestions or criticisms. If you find a mistake with this document,
please let me know so I can correct it in the next version. Thanks.
Please do not mail me questions about how to make your video card and
monitor work with X. This HOWTO is intended to be a rapid, painless
guide to normal installation using the new interactive configurator.
If you run into problems, browse the XFree86 Video Timings HOWTO,
<
http://metalab.unc.edu/LDP/HOWTO/XFree86-Video-Timings-HOWTO.html>.
(This is the up-to-date HTML version of XFree86's `Videomodes.doc'
file.) That document tells everything I know about configuration
troubleshooting. If it can't help you, I can't either.
2. Hardware requirements
You can find an up-to-date list of supported cards and chipset types
at
http://www.xfree86.org/4.0/Status.html
<
http://www.xfree86.org/4.0/Status.html>.
The documentation included with your video adaptor should specify the
chipset used. If you are in the market for a new video card, or are
buying a new machine that comes with a video card, have the vendor
find out exactly what the make, model, and chipset of the video card
is. This may require the vendor to call technical support on your
behalf; in general vendors will be happy to do this. Many PC hardware
vendors will state that the video card is a ``standard SVGA card''
which ``should work'' on your system. Explain that your software
(mention Linux and XFree86!) does not support all video chipsets and
that you must have detailed information.
You can also determine your videocard chipset by running the
SuperProbe program included with the XFree86 distribution. This is
covered in more detail below.
Supported video cards will work with all bus types, including ISA and
VLB and PCI.
One problem faced by the XFree86 developers is that some video card
manufacturers use non-standard mechanisms for determining clock
frequencies used to drive the card. Some of these manufacturers either
don't release specifications describing how to program the card, or
they require developers to sign a non-disclosure statement to obtain
the information. This would obviously restrict the free distribution
of the XFree86 software, something that the XFree86 development team
is not willing to do. For a long time, this has been a problem with
certain video cards manufactured by Diamond, but as of release 3.1 of
XFree86, Diamond has started to work with the development team to
release free drivers for these cards.
The suggested setup for XFree86 under Linux is a 486 or better with at
least 8 megabytes of RAM, and a video card with a chipset listed
above. For optimal performance, we suggest using an accelerated card,
such as an S3-chipset card. You should check the documentation for
XFree86 and verify that your particular card is supported before
taking the plunge and purchasing expensive hardware.
As a side note, the personal Linux system of Matt Welsh (this FAQ's
originator) was a 486DX2-66, 20 megabytes of RAM, equipped with a VLB
S3-864 chipset card with 2 megabytes of DRAM. He ran X benchmarks on
this machine as well as on Sun Sparc IPX workstations. The Linux
system was roughly 7 times faster than the Sparc IPX (for the curious,
XFree86-3.1 under Linux, with this video card, runs at around 171,000
xstones; the Sparc IPX at around 24,000). In general, XFree86 on a
Linux system with an accelerated SVGA card will give you much greater
performance than that found on commercial UNIX workstations (which
usually employ simple framebuffers for graphics).
Your machine will need at least 4 megabytes of physical RAM, and 16
megabytes of virtual RAM (for example, 8 megs physical and 8 megs
swap). Remember that the more physical RAM that you have, the less
that the system will swap to and from disk when memory is low. Because
swapping is inherently slow (disks are very slow compared to memory),
having 8 megabytes of RAM or more is necessary to run XFree86
comfortably. 16 is better. A system with 4 megabytes of physical RAM
could run much (up to 10 times) more slowly than one with 8 megs or
more.
3. Installing XFree86
It's quite likely that you obtained XFree86 as part of a Linux
distribution, in which case downloading the software separately is not
necessary. Or you may be able to get RPM binary packages built for
your machine, in which case you can just install those using rpm(1).
In either case you can skip this the rest of this section.
The Linux binary distributions of XFree86 can be found on a number of
FTP sites. On the XFree86 site they are under
<
ftp://ftp.xfree86.org/pub/XFree86/current/binaries/>. You will want
either the Linux-axp-glibc21, Linux-ix86-glibc20, or Linux-
ix86-glibc21 subdirectories, depending on your processor type
(axp=alpha, ix86=Intel 80x86) and Gnu C library version.
Before doing anything else, download and run the `Xinstall.sh' shell
script first. This may tell you about prerequisites you'll need to
have in place before continuing your installation. Complete
instructions for installing the XFree86 nbinary distribution are at
<
http://www.xfree86.org/4.0/Install2.html>.
The binary directory should contain release notes for the current
version in RELNOTES. Consult those for installation details
All that is required to install XFree86 is to obtain the above files,
create the directory /usr/X11R6 (as root), and unpack the files from
/usr/X11R6 with a command such as:
gzip -dc Xbin.tgz | tar xfB -
Remember that these tar files are packed relative to /usr/X11R6, so
it's important to unpack the files there.
You need to make sure that /usr/X11R6/bin is on your path. This can
be done by editing your system default /etc/profile or /etc/csh.login
(based on the shell that you, or other users on your system, use). Or
you can simply add the directory to your personal path by modifying
.bashrc or .cshrc, based on your shell.
You also need to make sure that /usr/X11R6/lib can be located by
ld.so, the runtime linker. To do this, add the line
/usr/X11R6/lib
to the file /etc/ld.so.conf, and run /sbin/ldconfig, as root.
4. Configuring XFree86
4.1. Normal Configuration
Configuring XFree86 to use your mouse, keyboard, monitor, and video
card correctly used to be something of a black art, requiring
extensive hand-hacking of a complex configuration file. No more;
recent releases have made the process nearly trivial. It simplifies
matters a lot that there are no longer separate servers for different
kinds of cards, just modules loaded by a common server. All you do to
configure it is fire up the program XF86Setup.
This program depends on the fact that all new PC hardware these days
ships with EGA/VGA capable monitors. It invokes the VGA16 server and
uses it to bring up X in a lowest-common-denominator 640x480 mode.
Then it runs an interactive program that walks you through a series of
five configuration panels -- mouse, keyboard, (video) card, monitor,
and `other' (miscellaneous server options). The whole process is quite
painless.
(If you're running Red Hat Linux, you may see a different program
called xf86config. This works fairly similarly to XF86Setup but does
not itself use an X interface and the VGA16 server.)
One minor point to keep in mind is that, if you're like most people
using a current PC, your keyboard is actually what XF86Setup calls
`Generic 102-key PC (intl)' rather than the default `Generic 101-key
PC'. If you pick the default (101) the key cluster on the extreme
right of your keyboard (numeric keypad and friends) may stop working.
If you're not sure of your monitor type, you can try the listed ones
in succession. Work your way from top down (upper choices involve
lower dot-clock speeds and are less demanding on the hardware). Back
off if you get hash or a seriously distorted picture. Minor
distortions (picture slightly too large, slightly too small, or
slightly off-center) are no problem; you'll get a chance to correct
those immediately by fine-tuning the mode.
And, when the program brings up xvidtune to allow you to tweak your
video mode, don't let the initial warning box make you nervous.
Modern multisync monitors (unlike their fixed-frequency predecessors)
are not easy to damage this way.
XF86Config may assume that your mouse device is /dev/mouse. If you
find this doesn't work, you may need to link /dev/mouse to whatever
/dev/ca[01] the mouse is on. If you find that XFree86 gives you a
"mouse busy" error when gpm is running, you may need to link to
/dev/ttyS[01] instead.
The configuration process operates by selecting a server module
corresponding to to the general type of your video card and
configuring an XF86Config that the server will read on startup to get
specific parameters for your installation. The location of XF86Config
varies depending on your OS, but one place to look for it is /etc/X11.
On older versions of XFree86, XF86Setup links the `X' command directly
to the chosen server. In recent versions, `X' is instead linked to a
set-user-id wrapper program called Xwrapper. The idea is that all the
setuid root stuff gets localized in Xwrapper so the server doesn't
have to run setuid root.
4.2. Troubleshooting
Occasionally, something will not be quite right when you initially
fire up the X server. This is almost always caused by a problem in
your configuration file. Usually, the monitor timing values are off,
or the video card dot clocks set incorrectly. Minor problems can be
fixed with xvidtune; a really garbled screen usually means you need to
go back into XF86Setup and choose a less capable monitor type.
If your display seems to roll, or the edges are fuzzy, this is a clear
indication that the monitor timing values or dot clocks are wrong.
Also be sure that you are correctly specifying your video card
chipset, as well as other options for the Device section of
XF86Config. Be absolutely certain that you are using the right X
server and that /usr/X11R6/bin/X is a symbolic link to this server.
If all else fails, try to start X ``bare''; that is, use a command
such as:
X > /tmp/x.out 2>&1
You can then kill the X server (using the ctrl-alt-backspace key com�
bination) and examine the contents of /tmp/x.out. The X server will
report any warnings or errors---for example, if your video card
doesn't have a dot clock corresponding to a mode supported by your
monitor.
Remember that you can use ctrl-alt-numeric + and ctrl-alt-numeric - to
switch between the video modes listed on the Modes line of the Screen
section of XF86Config. If the highest resolution mode doesn't look
right, try switching to lower resolutions. This will let you know, at
least, that those parts of your X configuration are working correctly.
Also, check the vertical and horizontal size/hold knobs on your
monitor. In many cases it is necessary to adjust these when starting
up X. For example, if the display seems to be shifted slightly to one
side, you can usually correct this using the monitor controls.
The USENET newsgroup comp.windows.x.i386unix is devoted to discussions
about XFree86, as is comp.os.linux.x. It might be a good idea to
watch that newsgroup for postings relating to your video
configuration---you might run across someone with the same problems as
your own.
4.3. Custom Configuration
You will need to hand-hack your X configuration to get optimal
performance if your monitor can support 1600x1200 -- the highest
canned resolution XF86Setup supports is 1280x1024.
If you want to hand-hack your video configuration for this or any
other reason, go see the LDP's XFree86 Video Timings HOWTO,
<
http://metalab.unc.edu/LDP/HOWTO/XFree86-Video-Timings-HOWTO.html>.
(This is the up-to-date HTML version of XFree86's `Videomodes.doc'
file.)
4.4. Using 16-bit Color
By default, X uses 8-bit color depth giving 256 colors. To circumvent
this restriction, many applications allocate their own colormaps,
resulting in sudden color jumps when the cursor moves between two
windows each having a color map of its own. The Arena WWW browser does
it this way.
If you want to use advanced graphic applications 256 colors may be not
sufficient. You may need to go to 16-bit color depth (65,536 colors).
But beware, not all applications will work with 16bit colors.
You can use 16bit color depth with 65K different colors simply by
starting X with
______________________________________________________________________
startx -- -bpp 16
______________________________________________________________________
or putting
______________________________________________________________________
exec X :0 -bpp 16
______________________________________________________________________
into your .xserverrc file. In order for this to work, however, you
need to have a
______________________________________________________________________
screen
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
DefaultColorDepth 16
______________________________________________________________________
If you're using xdm, you may need to change the Xservers file, which
is probably located in /etc/X11/xdm/. A typical configuration has
just one uncommented line, looking something like
______________________________________________________________________
:0 local /usr/X11R6/bin/X
______________________________________________________________________
Add
______________________________________________________________________
-bpp 16
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
:0 local /usr/X11R6/bin/X -bpp 16
______________________________________________________________________
Also, you'll need to add to the `screen' section of your X
configuration a Display part with a Depth value of 16. Generally you
can just duplicate the 8-bit Display section and change the Depth
field.
More colors makes your video card transfer more data during the same
time. If your video card cannot cope, then either the resolution has
or the refresh rate has to be reduced. By default, XFree reduces the
resolution. If you want to keep the resolution and reduce the refresh
rate, you must insert a new appropriate Modeline into your XF86Config
file which defines that resolution with a lower refresh rate. For
instance replace the old value
Modeline "1024x768" 75 1024 1048 1184 1328 768 771 777 806 -hsync -vsync
with
Modeline "1024x768" 65 1024 1032 1176 1344 768 771 777 806 -hsync -vsync.
The magic numbers 75 and 65 are the respective clock rates which you
find reported by X in your .X.err file. Consult the monitors file in
the XF86 documentation for Modelines suitable to the maximum clock
rate your video card can deliver under 16bit color depth.
5. Running XFree86
With your XF86Config file configured, you're ready to fire up the X
server and give it a spin. First, be sure that /usr/X11R6/bin is on
your path.
The command to start up XFree86 is
startx
This is a front-end to xinit (in case you're used to using xinit on
other UNIX systems).
This command will start the X server and run the commands found in the
file .xinitrc in your home directory. .xinitrc is just a shell script
containing X clients to run. If this file does not exist, the system
default /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xinit/xinitrc will be used.
A standard .xinitrc file looks like this:
#!/bin/sh
xterm -fn 7x13bold -geometry 80x32+10+50 &
xterm -fn 9x15bold -geometry 80x34+30-10 &
oclock -geometry 70x70-7+7 &
xsetroot -solid midnightblue &
exec fvwm2
This script will start up two xterm clients, an oclock, and set the
root window (background) color to midnightblue. It will then start up
fvwm2, the window manager. Note that fvwm2 is executed with the
shell's exec statement; this causes the xinit process to be replaced
with fvwm2. Once the fvwm2 process exits, the X server will shut down.
You can cause fvwm2 to exit by using the root menus: depress mouse
button 1 on the desktop background---this will display a pop up menu
which will allow you to Exit Fvwm2.
Be sure that the last command in .xinitrc is started with exec, and
that it is not placed into the background (no ampersand on the end of
the line). Otherwise the X server will shut down as soon as it has
started the clients in the .xinitrc file.
Alternately, you can exit X by pressing ctrl-alt-backspace in
combination. This will kill the X server directly, exiting the window
system.
The above is a very, very simple desktop configuration. Many wonderful
programs and configurations are available with a bit of work on your
.xinitrc file.
If you are new to the X Window System environment, we strongly suggest
picking up a book such as The Joy of X: An Overview of the X Window
System by Niall Mansfield (Addison-Wesley 1993, ISBN 0201-565129).
Using and configuring X is far too in-depth to cover here. See the man
pages for xterm, oclock, and fvwm2 for clues on getting started.
5.1. Terms of Use
This document is copyright 1996 by Eric S. Raymond. You may use,
disseminate, and reproduce it freely, provided you:
� Do not omit or alter this copyright notice.
� Do not omit or alter the version number and date.
� Do not omit or alter the document's pointer to the current WWW
version.
� Clearly mark any condensed or altered versions as such.
These restrictions are intended to protect potential readers from
stale or mangled versions. If you think you have a good case for an
exception, ask me.
5.2. Acknowledgements
This document was originated by Matt Welsh in the dim and backward
abysm of time. Thanks, Matt!
6. Translations
� Italian <
http://www.pluto.linux.it/ildp/HOWTO/XFree86-HOWTO.html>
� Slovenian <
http://www.lugos.si/delo/slo/HOWTO-sl/XFree86-HOWTO-
sl.html>
� Croatian <
http://meta.mioc.hr/XFree86-KAKO.html>
� Dutch <
http://www.nl.linux.org/doc/HOWTO/>
� <>Hungarian"
url="
http://www.ppk.ini.hu/texts/XFree86-HOGYAN/XFree86-HOGYAN.html">
