Creation of Functional, Minimal, and Correct Xorg.conf [SOLVED]

egan · 2009-09-27 03:29:08

Being fairly new to GNU/Linux in general, and totally green in doing things myself, I foolishly avoided the building of an xorg.conf. Following the beginner's guide in the wiki, I just did an "xorg --configure" which created a base xorg.conf for me. It worked, and I noticed no problems in the general use of my window manager (xmonad). I have an ATI Mobility Radeon X1300.

I discovered today that I was using the radeonhd driver which was giving me terrible performance in OpenGL applications, so edited xorg.conf to revert back to the plain radeon driver. Upon restarting X, my performance problems were gone, but my fonts in the Firefox interface devolved... I have taken this a wakeup call to actually write a good xorg.conf and to understand what everything in it is for.

I have done plenty of configuration, though I have never before looked into editing the dreaded xorg.conf, coming from Ubuntu, so I know very little. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Specifics:
What parts are necessary?
How do I get the fonts I had before back?
Graphics is all that concerns me, I have no strange input devices, and my touchpad works fine (I configured the fdi files for that).

I will list my current xorg.conf below. Fonts worked before I changed the driver from radeonhd to radeon and enabled the option for EXA. Before these changes, all the text contained therein was created automagically by xorg. I have a feeling most of this is unnecessary.

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

Section "Files"
        ModulePath   "/usr/lib/xorg/modules"
        FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/misc"
        FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/100dpi:unscaled"
        FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/75dpi:unscaled"
        FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/TTF"
        FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/Type1"
EndSection

Section "Module"
        Load  "glx"
        Load  "extmod"
        Load  "record"
        Load  "dri"
        Load  "dbe"
        Load  "dri2"
EndSection

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

Section "InputDevice"
        Identifier  "Mouse0"
        Driver      "mouse"
        Option      "Protocol" "auto"
        Option      "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
        Option      "ZAxisMapping" "4 5 6 7"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
        Identifier   "Monitor0"
        VendorName   "Monitor Vendor"
        ModelName    "Monitor Model"
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     "NoAccel"                   # [<bool>]
        #Option     "AccelMethod"               # [<str>]
        #Option     "offscreensize"             # [<str>]
        #Option     "SWcursor"                  # [<bool>]
        #Option     "ignoreconnector"           # [<str>]
        #Option     "forcereduced"              # [<bool>]
        #Option     "forcedpi"                  # <i>
        #Option     "useconfiguredmonitor"      # [<bool>]
        #Option     "HPD"                       # <str>
        #Option     "NoRandr"                   # [<bool>]
        #Option     "RROutputOrder"             # [<str>]
        #Option     "DRI"                       # [<bool>]
        #Option     "TVMode"                    # [<str>]
        #Option     "ScaleType"                 # [<str>]
        #Option     "UseAtomBIOS"               # [<bool>]
        #Option     "AtomBIOS"                  # [<str>]
        #Option     "UnverifiedFeatures"        # [<bool>]
        #Option     "Audio"                     # [<bool>]
        #Option     "HDMI"                      # [<str>]
        #Option     "COHERENT"                  # [<str>]
        Identifier  "Card0"
        Driver      "radeon"
        VendorName  "ATI Technologies Inc"
        BoardName   "M52 [Mobility Radeon X1300]"
        BusID       "PCI:1:0:0"
        Option      "AccelMethod"       "EXA"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
      Identifier "Screen0"
        Device     "Card0"
        Monitor    "Monitor0"
        SubSection "Display"
                Viewport   0 0
                Depth     1
        EndSubSection
        SubSection "Display"
                Viewport   0 0
                Depth     4
        EndSubSection
        SubSection "Display"
                Viewport   0 0
                Depth     8
        EndSubSection
        SubSection "Display"
                Viewport   0 0
                Depth     15
        EndSubSection
        SubSection "Display"
                Viewport   0 0
                Depth     16
        EndSubSection
        SubSection "Display"
                Viewport   0 0
                Depth     24
        EndSubSection
EndSection

Last edited by egan (2009-09-27 17:28:50)

MadTux · 2009-09-27 06:56:46

The current xorg can run completely without xorg.conf if you have HAL installed (on my installation I have no xorg.conf). See

http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Xor … _xorg.conf

So you may want to try without xorg.conf and subseqently add sections you need later.

Deuterium · 2009-09-27 06:59:22

hey, maybe this site will help? http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Xor … conf_Files
it provides some sample xorg.conf files which might help you out? idk, im just an arch newb

egan · 2009-09-27 15:06:46

MadTux wrote:

The current xorg can run completely without xorg.conf if you have HAL installed (on my installation I have no xorg.conf). See
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Xor … _xorg.conf
So you may want to try without xorg.conf and subseqently add sections you need later.

It works without an xorg.conf but the fonts are still not working. Unfortunately I know very little about this.

Runiq · 2009-09-27 15:13:45

A big advantage about the current xorg is that you can omit those parts that work out of the box. You only need xorg.conf for things that, for some reason, don't work (which would be the font issue in your case).

That being said – what are your problems? Post screenshots, describe in what way your fonts devolved etc.

Last edited by Runiq (2009-09-27 15:14:14)

MadTux · 2009-09-27 15:17:24

Did you already look into the wiki article about configuring Firefox? There are also some sections about font configuration:

http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Fir … ols_issues

egan · 2009-09-27 15:55:05

It appears from various things I am reading that I need to load the freetype module, and perhaps type1. Yet Xorg claims these modules do not exist.

egan · 2009-09-27 16:12:41

Okay here are screenshots of the problem. The first is the way I want the fonts to look, but the radeonhd driver doesn't work very well for me (OpenGL problems, etc):
http://www8.picfront.org/picture/WPLZqi … deonhd.png
Sorry for the dmenu, scrot was too fast...

And here is a screenshot with the normal radeon driver, which works better except for the fonts:
http://www8.picfront.org/picture/g6O6Cl … radeon.png

The inconsistency occurs in the tab titles and the url bar.

Last edited by egan (2009-09-27 16:14:04)

skottish · 2009-09-27 16:44:28

X searches all of the directories that you had in your original xorg.conf file, and it will load whatever it needs automatically. I don't think your problem is specifically with xorg.conf (or lack of), I think what you're seeing is the DPI changing between drivers.

Try this with each driver loaded and see if they're different:

xdpyinfo | grep resolution

egan · 2009-09-27 17:09:05

skottish wrote:

X searches all of the directories that you had in your original xorg.conf file, and it will load whatever it needs automatically. I don't think your problem is specifically with xorg.conf (or lack of), I think what you're seeing is the DPI changing between drivers.
Try this with each driver loaded and see if they're different:
xdpyinfo | grep resolution

Ah, yes indeed!
radeonhd: 96x96
radeon: 129x127

How do I get X with the radeon driver to use 96x96?

EDIT: Adding a dpi argument of 96 to /etc/X11/xinit/xserverrc fixed the problem. I didn't occur to me that the two drivers would use different dpis.

Thank you so much!

Last edited by egan (2009-09-27 17:13:28)

Arch Linux

#1 2009-09-27 03:29:08

Creation of Functional, Minimal, and Correct Xorg.conf [SOLVED]

#2 2009-09-27 06:56:46

Re: Creation of Functional, Minimal, and Correct Xorg.conf [SOLVED]

#3 2009-09-27 06:59:22

Re: Creation of Functional, Minimal, and Correct Xorg.conf [SOLVED]

#4 2009-09-27 15:06:46

Re: Creation of Functional, Minimal, and Correct Xorg.conf [SOLVED]

#5 2009-09-27 15:13:45

Re: Creation of Functional, Minimal, and Correct Xorg.conf [SOLVED]

#6 2009-09-27 15:17:24

Re: Creation of Functional, Minimal, and Correct Xorg.conf [SOLVED]

#7 2009-09-27 15:55:05

Re: Creation of Functional, Minimal, and Correct Xorg.conf [SOLVED]

#8 2009-09-27 16:12:41

Re: Creation of Functional, Minimal, and Correct Xorg.conf [SOLVED]

#9 2009-09-27 16:44:28

Re: Creation of Functional, Minimal, and Correct Xorg.conf [SOLVED]

#10 2009-09-27 17:09:05

Re: Creation of Functional, Minimal, and Correct Xorg.conf [SOLVED]

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