newbie X config question

Michael Dunn michael.dunn at anu.edu.au
Wed May 15 16:02:29 EST 2002


Hi all,

I'm struggling to get X to function properly on my laptop (a cheapo 
Pioneer) using Mandrake 8.1. The laptop uses an SiS 630 chipset, which 
has problems with linux, but which should be OK with a new video driver 
by Thomas Winischhofer (http://www.webit.at/~twinny/linuxsis630.shtml). 
I've followed TW's directions, but there are still problems: I can get a 
graphical console without the system freezing now, but I can't get it 
scaled right -- the best I can get leaves a 1cm border at the top and 
left, and the desktop area is approx 1.5 times the size of the screen.

This is the first time I've used a non-windows, non-mac system, so there 
could easily be very obvious things I'm missing. I've been reading 
widely, but I don't really know what I'm doing.

 From the XFree86 log:
 >(==) Log file: "/var/log/XFree86.9.log", Time: Fri Jan 25 00:33:23 2002
 >(++) Using config file: "/etc/X11/XF86Config.test-4"
I'm expecting it to use XF86Config-4 for the configuration, and there's 
no file XF86Config.test-4 in the directory. Is something weird happening 
here? If that date isn't just the creation date of the file, shouldn't 
the log be younger than this?

And from further down (these are the only parts marked (EE)):

> (II) Module ramdac: vendor="The XFree86 Project"
>     compiled for 4.1.0, module version = 0.1.0
>     ABI class: XFree86 Video Driver, version 0.4
> (EE) SIS(0): No Display subsection in Screen section "screen1" for depth/fbbpp 8/8
> (II) UnloadModule: "sis"
> (II) UnloadModule: "ramdac"
> (II) Unloading /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/libramdac.a
> (II) UnloadModule: "vgahw"
> (II) Unloading /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/libvgahw.a
> (EE) Screen(s) found, but none have a usable configuration.
> 
> Fatal server error:
> no screens found


In my XFConfig-4 file display subsections for "screen1" do exist, 

which I suppose means that this config file isn't the one which is being used. 


Where should I go from here? Is there some other way to find where X
is getting its configuration from? Is there some way to tell it where
to get it from? Any hints would be appreciated.

Michael







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