Setting up X on FreeBSD?

[Preston Crawford]

----- Original Message -----
From: Johnson David
Sent: 11/6/2003 11:19:02 AM
To: me at prestoncrawford.com;freebsd-newbies at freebsd.org
Subject: Re: Setting up X on FreeBSD?

> On Thursday 06 November 2003 09:41 am, me at prestoncrawford.com wrote:
> 
> > I'm not looking for help, so much as I'm looking for positive
> > affirmations that this can be done relatively easily once I get my
> > hands on a book or really start digging into the handbook.
> 
> I affirm that this can be done relatively easy. The trick is knowing 
> what video hardware you have, and if an older monitor, the refresh 
> rates. Make sure you can start X before you turn on GDM or KDM.
> 
> The Handbook talks about this. My preferred method is to use xf86config, 
> but you need to know about your hardware. An alternate method talked 
> about in the Handbook is to use "XFree86 -configure", but you need to 
> hand "tune" the configuration afterwards to get what you want.

Acually, since I currently have SuSE running, I copied SuSE's XF86Config file onto a floppy and used it to get my settings right in FreeBSD. Basically pulling out the parts I new would help the FreeBSD X config file be more accurate. So I have a good, working config file off which to base my FreeBSD file.

When I did this (made my own config file) "startx" fired up without problems, except for a mouse that bounced directly to the upper right corner and stayed there for some reason. And then, when I fired up gdm I got an error that said "gdm is already running". Weird. When I fired up KDM it came up right. But then it got stuck after I logged in.

So that's why I asked how easy it was. Seemingly I got X configured close, but it's still not working quite right. I forgot about XFree86 -configure. Maybe I'll try that tonight and once again apply changes from the SuSE file into the FreeBSD file. Maybe there's stuff specific to FreeBSD that wasn't covered when I ran configuration via /stand/sysinstall's various X configurators.

Preston