[vox-tech] looking at XFree86

[Peter Jay Salzman]

begin Robin Snyder <resnyder@ucdavis.edu> 
> I've run into the usual infinite regress of problems.  Woody has now
> become "stable" in the Debian hierarchy, so the other day, I upgraded my
> work machine from potato to woody.  (My previous message concerned my home
> machine.)  In the process, X broke.  After much futzing, it's still
> broken.

> I think I may just have it, although it keeps asking for the mga_hal
> module, which I've never needed before.

the first step should've been to use google to find out what mga_hal is.
if you google for it, you'd probably have a better idea about whether
it's relevent to your system or not.

i did a quick google, and it appears to be related to the matrox g400
series of cards.

do you have one of those (or a compatible video chipset)?

> I'm in the process of running
> dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xfree86 and have gotten to the point of
> specifying video modes.

try this instead:

   # XFree86 -configure

i've seen it fail exactly once, and that was because the machine had
both a video chipset and a video card at the same time.  it'll certainly
work great for a card as well supported as a matrox g400.  matrox fully
opened that card for linux developers.

> I'm trying to look at my old XF86Config file
> (which I backed up before upgrading) to see what I had listed before,
> but I can't read the XF86Config file.  I'm told that no such file
> exists, even though I can see it listed, with nonzero size, and I have
> read permission.  Can anyone tell me what's going on?

is . in your $PATH?

try using a full pathname: vi /etc/X11/XF86Config

use the file command to make sure it's not a broken symlink.

pete

-- 
Fingerprint: B9F1 6CF3 47C4 7CD8 D33E 70A9 A3B9 1945 67EA 951D