XFree86 Logfile Banner Section The ServerLayout Keyboard Setup

After the initial messages, X begins to process the ServerLayout section in the XF86Config. What is outputted in the log closely corresponds to what is written in the configuration file. The section defines what devices are used by the X server. In this case, a mouse, a keyboard and a monitor with a GeForce 2 graphics card. There may be multiple ServerLayout sections in the XF86Config, but only the first one will be parsed.

The first line, (==) ServerLayout "Anaconda Configured" means that Red Hat's configuration tool Anaconda was used to generate the initial XF86Config file. The file may still have been changed manually afterwards. Other often seen values are "XFree86 Configure" meaning that XFree86's configuration tool xf86config was used, "Main Layout" or "Default Layout".

3 Keyboard setup

01] (**) Option "XkbRules" "xfree86"

02] (**) XKB: rules: "xfree86" 03] (**) Option "XkbModel" "macintosh" 04] (**) XKB: model: "macintosh" 05] (**) Option "XkbLayout" "us" 06] (**) XKB: layout: "us"

These lines tell us that the user in the XF86Config requested a Macintosh keyboard with a USThe United States of America also referred to as the United States U. America ¹ or the States is a federal republic in central North America, stretching from the Atlantic in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west. It shares land borders with Canada in keyboard layoutComputers and other typing devices offer many different keyboard layouts for people to be able to input data in different languages. The standard English keyboard layout is known as QWERTY. Various alternatives to the QWERTY layout have been suggested, ma. Other valid values for Option "XkbModel" is "pc101", "pc105" and more. The output comes from a Section "InputDevice" for a keyboard. Sometimes autorepeat is also specified

01] (**) Option "AutoRepeat" "500 30"

Which means that if a keyThe word key has several uses: A key (lock is a physical object used to manipulate a lock. A key (music forms a property of a piece of music: see also key signature. A key (cryptography consists of a piece of information, usually kept secret, used to cust is held down for more than 500 ms, X will begin repeating it with a speed of one character every 30 ms. However, some desktop manager s like GNOMEGNOME is a computer desktop environment for UNIX and UNIX-like operating systems. It is the official desktop of the GNU Project. Origin The GNOME G NU N etwork O bject M odel E nvironment) project was started in August 1997 by Miguel de Icaza and Federico override those values and specifies their own autorepeat. Most often, the keyboard driver initialization ends with

01] (==) Keyboard: CustomKeycode disabled

The first keyboard driver in XFree86 where designed for PC keyboards. Then it was ported to other platforms with keyboards that can emit other scan code s than what the AT keyboardThe AT keyboard was a keyboard with 84 keys introduced with the IBM PC/AT computer. It succeeded the 83-key PC/XT keyboard and therefore did not have many of the features seen on modern keyboards such as arrow keys and dual ctrl and alt keys. It was later did. Therefore, to handle those keyboards the CustomKeycode option was added but should be disabled for most keyboards (which it is by default). Sometimes the message is thought to be an error, it is not.

4 File paths

After the keyboard setup XFree86 locates the path to the RGBAdditive color mixing: adding red to green yields yellow; adding yellow to blue yields white. The RGB color model is an additive color model in which red, green, and blue light are combined in various ways to create other colors. The very idea for the mod database, to the modules and to where the fontsIn typography, a typeface is a co-ordinated set of character designs, which usually comprises an alphabet of letters, a set of numerals and a set of punctuation marks. There are also typefaces of Ideograms and symbols (e. mathematical or map making) In it are. This is how it looks in the log:

01] (**) FontPath set to "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/misc,/usr/lib/X11/fonts/cyrillic,/more-paths.."

02] (**) RgbPath set to "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/rgb" 03] (==) ModulePath set to "/usr/X11R6/lib/modules"

Line 1: All the directories in which the X server searches for fonts are outputted. The paths are defined with a number of FontPaths in Section "Files" in XF86Config:

Section "Files" FontPath "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/misc" FontPath "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/cyrillic" ... EndSection

Instead of letting X load all the fonts by itself you can use a fontserver. xfs is a fontserver included in X which usually listens to port 7100. To use it you only need to specify one FontPath:

FontPath "unix/:7100"

Line 2: Specifies the path and firstname of the RGB database which is a file. In this case it would be located at /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/rgb.txt and contain a list of color codes along with their color names. X itself appends the file ending.

Line 3: The path to where all modules are located. The default is usually fine. It is needed for XFree86 to be able to find the modules specified in Section "Module".

5 Module loading

XFree86 loads a number of modules when it starts up. Most of them are optional and there are quite a few of them. Therefore, no two systems load exactly the same modules but the structure of the output the modules give in the logfile is mostly the same.

01] (II) LoadModule: "bitmap"

02] (II) Loading /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/fonts/libbitmap.a 03] (II) Module bitmap: vendor="The XFree86 Project" 04] compiled for 4.3.0, module version = 1.0.0 05] Module class: XFree86 Font Renderer 06] ABI class: XFree86 Font Renderer, version 0.4

In the example above, XFree86 successfully loaded module bitmap. The first line specifies the modulename, the second path and filename to the module and the third to sixth, version information and vendor name. In older versions of XFree86 (4.0 and older) the output for modules is less verbose:

01] (II) Loading /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/fonts/libbitmap.a

02] (II) Module bitmap: vendor="The XFree86 Project" 03] compiled for 4.0, module version = 1.0.0

6 Monitor probing

In Section "Monitor" in XF86Config, boundary values for vertical refresh and horizontal sync is specified like this:

Section "Monitor" HorizSync 31.5 - 48.5 VertRefresh 50.0 - 70.0 ... EndSection

Which produces output along these lines in the log

01] (II) ATI(0): VG150: Using hsync range of 30.00-62.00 kHz

02] (II) ATI(0): VG150: Using vrefresh range of 50.00-75.00 Hz

Which further tells us that graphics card driver is "ati" and monitor name is "VG150". Those values aren't the values that will use, they merely are the ranges in which X will probe for a suitable mode.

01] (II) MGA(0): Monitor name: CPD-100EST

This line is usually outputted by the graphics driver via DDC. The reported name may or may not correspond to the name given in Section "Screen" and can be found on the backside of the monitor.

7 External links

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