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X starts up at the position specified by the ViewPort value. A value of 0,0 tells X to start with position 0,0 in the upper-left corner of the display.
With the Virtual value, you can define a virtual screen that’s larger than your physical screen. If you specify a larger screen, X will automatically scroll the screen as needed when you move the pointer to positions outside the range of your physical screen.
TIP: Many programs found on the Internet assume a three-button mouse and a screen size of 1152×900. This screen size is a typical screen size found on a Sun workstation. So to emulate such a system, you would need to specify the Emulate3Buttons in the Pointer section and a Virtual 1152 900 in a Display subsection of the Screen section.
After running SuperProbe and building a basic XF86Config file, you then can run the xf86Config program to generate a config file for your system. First, make sure that you aren’t in the /usr/X11R6/lib/X11 directory, because this is where X looks for the XF86Config file first, and you don’t want to overwrite the file you just created. To run the xf86Config program, issue the following command:
/usr/X11R6/bin/xf86Config
The xf86Config program asks many questions about your system, which it uses to fill in the various sections of the XF86Config file. After the program finishes, you must check to make sure that the values are similar to the ones you collected while creating your version of the file. The only items you’ll need help with are the clock values for your monitor. You can get X itself to help with those values.
By running X in a special mode, the program generates a file with information about your entire system. You can use the information in this file to complete your XF86Config file. To run X in the special probe-only mode, simply enter this command:
X -probeonly > /tmp/x.value 2>&1
The command redirects the output of X into a file named /tmp/x.value. This is an ASCII file you can edit with any ASCII editor, such as vi. You can cut the clock information from this file and paste the information into your XF86Config file, thus completing your configuration file for X.
• See “Copying, Cutting, and Pasting,” p. 197
Now copy the file you’ve created into one of the directories XFree86 looks through. More than likely, you can copy the file with this command:
cp XF86Config /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/
You’re now ready to start up your X server with the startx command.
To operate and use X, you need at least a startup file named .xinitrcm, which provides default settings used by X when running. To override the defaults, you can use a personal file named .Xresources that you place in your home directory. Linux provides a default .xinitrc in /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc, although you may find the file in /usr/lib/X11/xinit/xinitrc. See the man pages for startx and xrdb for more information on these files.
In this chapter, you learned about the XFree86 implementation of the X Windows XR11R6 standard. You’ve seen the difference between client and server applications and how they vary from other PC-based client/server applications. The following chapters provide more information:
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