xorg/ ConfigurationHelp

Configuration Help

If you are using a vendor-supplied Xorg (like on a Linux distribution) please follow your vendor's instruction on how to install and configure Xorg. Your vendor may have provided proprietary configuration tools. Please consult your vendor's documentation/support for information on how to use these tools:

Configuring Xorg

Xorg provides two ways to configure the Xserver:

  1. Autoconfiguration - Xorg probes the hardware, and if built with HAL support (default in Xorg 1.4 and later) asks HAL to provide input device configuration.
  2. Xorg -configure - which can create a skeleton configuration file which should get you started if you need to change a configuration option from the autoconfigured default.

Xorg -configure

The Xserver is capable of creating its own configuration file. As root just run: X -configure. The Xserver will then load each driver module, probe for the driver and create a configuration file. The configuration file will be stored in the home directory of the user who started the Xserver (usually /root). It's called xorg.conf.new so another config file that may exist in this directory will be overwritten.

You may edit this file by hand to suit your needs. Generally you don't have to modify the mouse type, as the auto protocol should suit most needs. If your monitor is DDC capable you don't need to set up monitor ranges. This may not be true for some older cards which don't have DDC support, or if your monitor connection doesn't pass thru DDC information which is the case for some KVMs.

In case you need to set additional driver options, all available driver options are already listed in the config file. Go to the device section and remove the '#' mark at the beginning of the line. If the option requires an additional argument, the type of argument is specified at the end of the line:

  • [<bool>] means a boolean argument. Uncommenting the option implicitly means 'True'. To disable the option you can add the string "0", "no", "false" or "off". Likewise to enable the option you may use "1", "yes", "true" or "on".
  • Any integer [<int>], float [<float>] value or string [<str>] needs to be quoted in double quotes.
  • Frequencies [<freq>] contain a float value followed by the unit, i.e. Hz, kHz or MHz. Option names and values are case insensitive. For more information please consult man 5 xorg.conf.