Setting up a basic display

Table of contents:

Exercise 2

Setting up a basic display

For the sake of brevity we will define the X server as a program that manages a computer display - the display usually consists of the monitor, the mouse and the keyboard. It is usually operating system independent.
It is the program that provides X display services

You will be using the configure option that comes with the “X” program itself (Please note that the command “X” is actually a symbolic link to the Xorg program). This method is usually able to correctly detect the type and settings for most hardware but if it is unable to do so you may have to fine tune things using the documentation and/or driver for your particular hardware. Note that the “X” command is case sensitive. The
X server’s configuration files are traditionally stored under the /etc/X11 directory and the file is named “xorg.conf”.

To configure and start X

1. Log into your machine as root.
2. Make sure you are in runlevel 3. To confirm this type:



3. If you already have your GUI environment up and running, rename/backup your X server’s
configuration file. The original file name is /etc/X11/xorg.conf – rename it to xorg.conf.bak. Type:



The above command will effectively, render your current X window setup un-usable (after restarting the X server).

4. Use the “configure” option of the X server to create a new configuration file for your setup. Type:



A sample configuration file will be generated for you under root’s home directory.

(If you get an output like “Xorg is not able to detect your mouse” after running the above command,
it might be because the mouse device file is not in the expected location. You can quickly fix this by
creating a soft link to the expected mouse device). To fix this problem type:
“ ln –s /dev/input/mice /dev/mouse “

5. Make sure that the automatically generated configuration file was truly created under /root. Type:




6. Now test the X server using the config file that was automatically generated for you. You will
launch the X server in the background. Type:



Consult the Xorg man page (man 1 Xorg) to find out what the “-config” option actually does?

7. You will be thrown into a void similar to the one below.




Several things happened at this point.

i. If you have a mouse connected to you system, you should see the mouse cursor (circled red) above
ii. The X server is running in virtual terminal 7 (tty7).

8. Switch back to the first virtual console. Type:

<CTRL> <ALT> <F1>

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