Arch Linux

aeneas

Member

Registered: 2006-02-17

Posts: 14

Gnome startup error w. Xorg 7 [solved]

After successfully setting up (and being impressed with) Arch on an old laptop, I installed it today on my main computer. I installed fresh gnome and xorg 7 from mirrors. I have installed gdm, but I don't want to use it actually, so I do startx, with 'exec gnome-session' in my .xinitrc. I have a lot of gnome config files on my home partition btw. I have a 19 inch tft monitor and my resolution is supposed to be 1280x1024 but it's lower. I also don't seem to have an application launcher in the top gnome bar, or I just can't reach it because the screen is too big for the monitor to show. Anyway, when I make it smallest possible, there's nothing but the two applets I set up in my previous fedora installation. So how can I change my  screen resolution? Here's my xorg.conf:

Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier     "X.org Configured"
    Screen      0  "Screen0" 0 0
    InputDevice    "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
    InputDevice    "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
EndSection

Section "Files"
    RgbPath      "/usr/share/X11/rgb"
    ModulePath   "/usr/lib/xorg/modules"
    FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/misc"
    FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/75dpi"
    FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/100dpi"
    FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/TTF"
    FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/Type1"
EndSection

Section "Module"
    Load  "record"
    Load  "xtrap"
    Load  "glx"
    Load  "dbe"
    Load  "dri"
    Load  "extmod"
    Load  "freetype"
    Load  "type1"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
    Identifier  "Keyboard0"
    Driver      "kbd"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
    Identifier  "Mouse0"
    Driver      "mouse"
    Option        "Protocol" "IMPS/2"
    Option        "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
    Option        "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
    Option      "Emulate3Buttons" "yes"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier   "Monitor0"
    VendorName   "ViewSonic"
    ModelName    "ViewSonic VG910b"
    DisplaySize  380    300
    HorizSync    30.0 - 82.0
    VertRefresh  50.0 - 75.0
    Option       "dpms"
EndSection

Section "Device"
        ### Available Driver options are:-
        ### Values: <i>: integer, <f>: float, <bool>: "True"/"False",
        ### <string>: "String", <freq>: "<f> Hz/kHz/MHz"
        ### [arg]: arg optional
        #Option     "ShadowFB"               # [<bool>]
        #Option     "DefaultRefresh"         # [<bool>]
        #Option     "ModeSetClearScreen"     # [<bool>]
    Identifier  "Card0"
    Driver      "vesa"
    VendorName  "nVidia Corporation"
    BoardName   "NV17 [GeForce4 MX 420]"
    BusID       "PCI:1:0:0"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier "Screen0"
    Device     "Card0"
    Monitor    "Monitor0"
    DefaultDepth 24
    SubSection "Display"
        Viewport   0 0
        Depth     16
        Modes     "800x600" "640x480"
    EndSubSection
    SubSection "Display"
        Viewport   0 0
        Depth     24
        Modes     "1280x1024" "1152x864" "1152x768" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
    EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "DRI"
    Group    0
    Mode    0666
EndSection

Also, when gnome starts, I see a message box with this error:

Error activating XKB configuration.
It can happen under various circumstances:
- a bug in libxklavier library
- a bug in X server (xkbcomp, xmodmap utilities)
- X server with incompatible libxkbfile implementation

X server version data:
The X.Org Foundation
70000000

If you report this situation as a bug, please include:
- The result of xprop -root | grep XKB
- The result of gconftool-2 -R /desktop/gnome/peripherals/keyboard/kbd

The first suggested command gives:

_XKB_RULES_NAMES_BACKUP(STRING) = "xorg", "pc105", "us", "", ""
_XKB_RULES_NAMES(STRING) = "xorg", "pc105", "us", "", ""

And the second:

layouts = [us,sr       yz,yu   yz] # I'm from Serbia, and this is from before
model = pc105
overrideSettings = false
options = [grp grp:alts_toggle]

Also when I try to eg open fstab from nautilus I get an error "Couldn't display "/etc/fstab". - There was an error launching the application." But sure, it works if I run gedit from terminal and open it.

///

Btw I think the Xorg7 wiki page should mention xorg-fonts-XXdpi in the " Most Common Packages" paragraph, it could definitely save some time to anyone like me wondering why it seems like Emacs is trying to render martian letters .

aeneas

Member

Registered: 2006-02-17

Posts: 14

Re: Gnome startup error w. Xorg 7 [solved]

Looking at my previous xorg.conf from Fedora, I concluded that I need the nv driver instead of vesa. So installing xf86-video-nv solved the screen resolution problem, and the Xorg-related error message was due to the what seems to be an incompatibility between previous keyboard layout gnome configuration.