[sclug] Debian 5.0.1 & xorg

[Phillip Chandler]

On Thu, 2009-07-09 at 10:06 +0100, Alex Butcher wrote:
> On Wed, 8 Jul 2009, Phillip Chandler wrote:
> 
> > Ive now installed Debian 5.0.1 I used to have problems before from xorg
> > crashing.
> >
> > I read one post on the Ubuntu forums about intel 915 that said having
> > the display as 24 colours instead of 32 would solve the problem under
> > Ubuntu, as the 915 didnt like 32bit colour depth.
> >
> > Your all probably asking what that has to do with Debian. Well so am I,
> > but heres the theory. As Ubuntu is based on Debian Im thinking that the
> > same fault with Ubuntu could work under Debian as Ubuntu is a fork of
> > Debian, so thats the idea.
> 
> As long as the same bug/feature is present in the Debian 5.0.1 packages as
> the Ubuntu distribution that has the same problem, quite possibly.
> 
> > But I took a look at my xorg.conf and its completely blank. But read
> > somewhere else that xorg has been replaced with randr, but Ive no idea
> > where the randr config files are stored, and the man pages are too over
> > my head.
> 
> The person that wrote what you read has got the wrong end of the stick.
> 
> RandR is the 'Resize and Rotate' extension for X. It can dynamically change
> modes and resize the root and child windows accordingly.  Handy for things
> like projectors and rotateable displays as the desktop fills the whole
> screen (and no more), but X doesn't need to be restarted/reconfigured as it
> used to to achieve the same effect.  Maybe the person that wrote what you
> read figured that with randr, there's no need to specify multiple modelines
> any longer, and so _for their purposes_ xorg.conf is redundant and
> over-generalised. xorg.conf is useful for more than just specifying
> modelines, though, as you've discovered.
> 
> Anyway, the long and short of it is that if you create an xorg.conf, Xorg
> will use it. I don't know about Debian but the path to it in FC is
> /etc/X11/xorg.conf.

Brilliant. Thanks for that, just needs to try and read up on xorg conf
files. Id run a live disc and had a look, so will try and see what the
live disc xorg looks like.

> > So my technical question is : Where would I find the randr file that
> > replaces xorg, or is there a gui that runs under Debian 5 Gnome ?
> 
> randr isn't really configured as such. It's either loaded as an extension
> into Xorg (default) or not.
> 
> > Thanks
> > Phillip
> 
> HTH,
> Alex.