pavement

Configuring X

From FreeBSDwiki
Revision as of 20:24, 14 February 2005 by 65.9.174.244 (Talk)
Jump to: navigation, search

Starting with FreeBSD 5.3-RELEASE, Xorg is the default X11 implementation for FreeBSD. Xorg is the X server of the open source X Window System implementation released by the X.Org Foundation. Xorg is based on the code of XFree86 4.4RC2 and X11R6.6. The X.Org Foundation released X11R6.7 in April 2004 and X11R6.8.1 in September 2004, this latter is the version currently available in the FreeBSD Ports Collection.

To install Xorg from source it is recommended that you first update your ports using cvsup.

After logged in via su, build Xorg from ports

# cd /usr/ports/x11/xorg && make install clean


Note: To build Xorg in its entirety, be sure to have at least 4 GB of free space available.

After you have installed Xorg, you must configure it. This is a multi-step process and can get a tad complex.

As su, run the Xorg Config File creator

# Xorg -configure

This will generate an X11 configuration skeleton file in the /root directory called xorg.conf.new (whether you su(1) or do a direct login affects the inherited supervisor $HOME directory variable). For XFree86, this configuration file is called XF86Config.new. The X11 program will attempt to probe the graphics hardware on the system and write a configuration file to load the proper drivers for the detected hardware on the target system.

# xorgconfig

This will run a sort of wizard that will simplify the process for creating the config file.

The next step is to test the existing configuration to verify that Xorg can work with the graphics hardware on the target system. To perform this task, type:

# Xorg -config xorg.conf.new

If a black and grey grid and an X mouse cursor appear, the configuration was successful. To exit the test, just press Ctrl+Alt+Backspace simultaneously.

If all went to plan, you should have gotten Xorg working and happy. Now you are ready to go on and install your window manager (KDE, GNOME, BlackBox, XFCE, WindowMaker, SawFish, etc...)


Note: Most of this information came DIRECTLY from the FreeBSD Handbook located http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/x-install.html

Personal tools