Date: Tue, 12 Sep 2006 12:58:55 +0530 From: Arindam <arindam.mukerjee@gmail.com> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: X Configuration Woes Message-ID: <d85a51ff0609120028o10fa699awc05fd6532e2dd103@mail.gmail.com>
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I am an absolute FreeBSD Newbie and I decided to give it a try over a lazy weekend - mainly because I don't want to throw away my old PIII box. I picked up FreeBSD 5.4 which was all I got and I am dual booting it with RHEL4.3. My box is rather old ... P3 733 Mhz with 256 megs of SDRAM@100MHz, and I installed FreeBSD on the first 6.5 Gigs of my Seagate harddrive ... connected to the Primary master IDE interface. Now I had these two FreeBSD 5.4 ISOs ... CD1 and CD2, and I booted from CD1 directly and did the install. There is no automatic X configuration in the installer so I tried running it manually. 1. I tried running "Xorg -configure". For some reason "Xorg -configure" threw an error: xf86EnableIO: could not open /dev/io for extended IO. However, when I did run: ls -l /dev/io I got: crw------- root wheel 246, 14 /dev/io 2. Never figured out what went wrong there but instead used "xorgconfig" and that "worked", as in, it wrote my config file. Here are my Screen details: *** Samsung Samtron 45Bn monitor (33-55 KHz HorSyncRate, 50-120 Hz Vert Refresh Rate). *** Cirrus Logic GD 5465 graphics card on a PCI slot - with 4MB video memory. *** For one, I have an immovable mouse ... it is an old haggardly Logitech 3-button serial mouse and I could not make it work. Don't know which is the device name to use for the port it is connected to. Should it be /dev/tty00 or /dev/cuad0 or /dev/sysmouse or /dev/mse0? So could not configure it. - Tried running sysinstall to configure it but that would not work either ... tried Logitech, Microsoft and MouseMan protocols and /dev/tty00 and /dev/cuad0 for device names ... all combinations. Did not work. I would have liked to attach my xorg.conf file but don't have access to it right away. I guess there are no probs in it ... I read through the relevant sections of it and from what I remember of my RedHat Linux 6.0 days, this file seems fine. 3. Finally I tried changing the /etc/ttys file and for /dev/ttyv8, turned xterm "on" from "off". ==>> Now each time I boot into FreeBSD, I get a flickering blank, black screen with nothing on it. I keep try [Ctrl+] Alt + F<n> ...n=1..12 ... but no success. ==>> I keep trying Ctrl + Alt + Backspace ... but no breakthrough. ==>> I tried Ctrl + Alt + KP_+/- also, with the Num Lock on ... but again no respite. Some observations: 1. While the screen continuously flickers, the Num Lock of the Keyboard keeps blinking too (if it was on, to start with). 2. A while back, when I had not yet configured X with xorgconfig and just like that switched on "xterm" on /dev/ttyv8, I rememeber the getty program was respawning too quickly, due to which it was going into 30 second sleeps. So I switched xterm off. Of course, after that I found xorgconfig. 3. Here are the modes I have allowed in xorgconfig: a. 8 bit - 800x600, 640x480 (removed 1024x768, 1280x1024) b. 16 bit (default) - 800x600, 640x480 (removed 1024x768, 1280x1024) c. 24 bit - 800x600, 640x480 (removed 1024x768, 1280x1024) 4. Earlier, after completing xorgconfig, while xterm was off on ttyv8 in /etc/ttys, I tried: startx -- -depth 16 :1 vt10 and it gave me the same problems. 5. Finally, during sysinstall installation of the OS, I could not configure moused with my mouse ... and while I would briefly see a tiny pointer, I would not see it move with my mouse movements. If you can wade through this gibberish, please help. Cheers, Andy
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