Reconfigure a Broken Xorg Server
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Reconfigure a Broken Xorg Server
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What is a X Server?
Your X Server provides the basic framework for a GUI environment: drawing and moving windows on the screen and interacting with a mouse and/or keyboard. There are a number of different X servers, both free and proprietary however Freespire uses X-org as your X server. So what does all this mean? Basically it is the program which gives you the beautiful visual environment in Freespire and Linux in general, which allows you to use your mouse and navigate using windows. Without it you would have to do everything from the command line, using nothing but a keyboard much like back in the DOS days. If this is the type of screen you're currently looking at, than this will get you back up and running.
Sometimes it may be necessary to use a more advanced method to change the configuration of one or more aspects of your X-server setup - for example: when having difficulty in getting the correct monitor display resolution of frequency, or using unusual keyboard or mouse type. This is yet another, more advanced, method of configuring your /etc/X11/xorg.conf X-server file. While using the Freespire/KDE Control Center is the easiest method of making X-server config changes - sometimes a little more control is needed - using this method it is possible to set up exactly the right parameters for your GPU (graphics card), monitor, keyboard and mouse - without having to manually edit (possibly erroneously!) any .conf files. You can also use this method to recover your graphical environment if you get stuck at the command prompt if the X-server fails to start after a driver update/config change for example.
dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg are command line scripts to be run from any command line environment as root user (or issued with a sudo for a typical Freespire install) and use the whiptail/ncurses graphical dialog interface - similar to some common Debian installer type interfaces (commonly called wizards). Navigate through the dialogs by using:
- Tab key to toggle between the buttons
- SpaceBar to toggle check boxes on or off
- Return to accept/next/ok
- Arrow Keys for Up/Down in lists
- Left/Right to tab between boxes
You will be prompted at the end of the processes whether you want to save changes or not.
dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg will also save the existing xorg.conf file in /etc/X11 as a dated backup file when it writes the new file once the config process is completed. You can restore the old version by renaming it if the need arrises. It is also pretty quick to make a small change to one aspect of the config as the app will have the current settings pre-selected in the dialog. If the first attempt to configure X isn't successful/satisfactory - run it again until satisfactory result is obtained.
Preparation
To use this tool you will need to do a little preparation to ensure you have the info needed by dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg as you will be asked a series of questions about your setup and hardware - read carefully these questions - often it is ok to leave the answer box blank (where it is suggested) or choose auto.
- Graphics Card - ensure you have the correct drivers installed for your hardware before using this tool. Generic vesa/nv type drivers have limited capabillities and cannot do openGL/3D graphics
- Your Keyboard type - often PC104
- Mouse port connection - commonly /dev/psaux
- Server Modules to load - when using the official nvidia driver "nvidia" it is important to not load the module/section "Dri"
- Monitor Display Resolutions to be used
- Horizontal and Vertical Resolutions (-if you select Advanced when prompted in monitor setup section) - search the web if you don't have the manual/spec of your monitor
- Colour Bit Depth to use - 24 bit for most newer hardware
Notes
To see the changes made you will need to restart the X-server: (This is assuming your running an X Session to begin with)
- Log out from your desktop manager (You can choose Quick Restart and skip next step)
- Hit 'Ctrl Alt Backspace' to kill and restart the X server. If the server fails to start you can re-run the dpkg-reconfigure tool again to see if you can correct any errors or try a different config.
Xorg will attempt to detect your monitors capabillities by trying to read the connected monitors EDID (Extended display identification data) tag. If found - X will ignore the horizontal/vertical frequencies in the xorg.conf file and use the detected specs instead - this means that for Xorg it isn't strictly necessary to specify frequencies - but older monitors may not have EDID, so it won't do any harm to specify them.
If you have added other custom sections to your X config file for things such as - multi-head display, multi-button mouse, touchscreen etc., you will probably need to add these sections again manually after using the dpkg-reconfigure method.
Attribution
Portions of this text is taken from Mepis.org and Wikipedia.org and is used in accordance to the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License and the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License respectively. --OmShiva
