I used xf86config to (hopefully) configure x
It didn't work

upon startx, the server would spit out:

Section "InputDevice"
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

not a recognized section name

I opened XF86Config, and found the line which was dealing with a section regarding keyboard setup.

I commented out the block and tried again.

now the server said:

Fatal Error:
You must specify a keyboard in XF86Config


My question is, how do i specify a keyboard without using the XF86Config: Section "InputDevice"

To make it clearer:

The man page for XF86Config tells me that the old convention is to use the Section "Keyboard"
but they don't tell you how to specify the driver/keyboard/device.

What distro are you using? The xf86config is really picky, can't make any mistakes I have always found out and sometimes in my own experience it fails at times too. Try to rerun it again. If your using like Redhat you can try Xconfigurator, SuSE uses Yast or SaX, and so on.

sorry, i'm a noob.

Using RH 7.1

Have you tried running Xconfigurator then. Try that.

Used XConfigurator and when i try to start up x i pass the keyboard crap, but it gives up and states the following:

SVGA: There is no mode definition named "640x480"
SVGA: Removing mode "640x480" from list of valid modes.

I selected ALL modes valid, but x just went through the list and discarded them one after another, and finally said:

Fatal server error:
No valid modes found.


i KNOW i set up the monitor and card right, i even calculated the H/V synchs by hand to get the right values :P

Thanks for any help

wow, what a bitch. Sorry you're having issues- - let's see if I can add anything valuable:

open up the file '/etc/X11/XF86Config' in some editor. Gedit is fine if you're in GNOME, it's in the applications menu, or just do 'vi <filename>' from a command line if you know vi.

You should be able to see EVERYTHING X sees when it starts up. There should be a 'Screen' section that defines your monitor and video card, then the default depth and video modes. You can add modes in, replace what's there, etc, using the syntax you see there.

Hope this helps a little.

Hey sveede!
"i KNOW i set up the monitor and card right, i even calculated the H/V synchs by hand to get the right values :P "

Is there a way you can find the approx H/V synchs from the monitor size??? I have had nightmares by trying to modify the XF86Config file and I ended up reinstalling my OS all over again. I don't have my monitor specs and it wud be very useful if you can tell me if there is a correlation between the H/V sync rates andthe monitor size?
Sorry, I don't know much to be of any help to your problem.

Bedankt
prowzen

the monitor size is not directly related to the sync frequencies. You have to find the vendor and get the specs

There's a really good HOW-TO on setting/calculating your video timings... be prepared for a bit of maths though (useful to have Gnumeric handy!)

http://www.linux.org/docs/ldp/howto/...WTO/index.html

I did a bit of tinkering myself; sadly I still can't get my monitor to display 1600x1200 in 16 or 24 bit colour (it does so quite happily in Windows). I wonder whether there are still some problems with the XFree86 savage driver.

Check out a great xf86 video configuration tutorial at
http://www.daemonnews.org/199901/xpert.html</a>