Re: X configuration [was Re: sfdisk]

[turnbull@example.com (Stephen J. Turnbull)]

>>>>> "Jim" == Jim Schweizer <schweiz@example.com> writes:

    Jim> After a weekend of fiddling around and eventually
    Jim> reinstalling X_windows I can now switch between 3 video modes
    Jim> but still haven't got the color map.  Things like Xpaint only
    Jim> draws B&W and Java applets complain they can't load the color
    Jim> maps....

Do you get *any* colors other than black and white?  If you are
getting other colors, then it sounds to me like you only have 16
colors.  All of those colors are probably being allocated by your
window manager and color xterms (mine uses at least 6, including the
solid backdrop, and if I have any color xterms that pretty much would
account for the rest of the 16).

Xpaint and Java probably want to allocate their own color cells.  You
have a color map, but if you've only got 16 colors then none are free
most likely.  I suppose Java comes in via Netscape?  Netscape often
allocates all of the free colorcells on my 256-color display, and
everything complains about not enough colors then.

    >> Check to make that /usr/X11R6/bin/X is symlinked to XF86_W32.

Have you done this?  It looks to me like you are not using the svga or
accelerated servers, but rather the vga16 server, if you are still
only getting sixteen colors.  Run 'xpdyinfo | fgrep depth'.  You
should see lots of '8's.  (Or pipe it to less, but that gives lots of
confusing irrelevant info.)  Try running 'X -showconfig' from the
command line.  If all of these indicate you should have the
accelerated server running, you'll have to trace back from whatever
command you use to start X normally (startx and xinit are typically
involved) to make sure none of those scripts start the wrong server.

Make sure that your path points to the right place, as do the various
symlinks.  (XFree86 3.x likes to be installed in /usr/X11R6, but
/usr/X11 and /usr/X386 are common aliases.  To make matters worse,
/usr/bin/X11 is often an alias for /usr/X?/bin, and so on.)

I'm not quoting the XF86Config file; it all looks fine to me.
However, check the man page and make sure that your server can
actually handle the 16 and 32 bit depths; XFree86 3.1.1 cannot handle
>8 bpp in the XF86_W32 incarnation.  You might want to back up your
current XF86Config to XF86Config.orig and then start deleting
everything that's irrelevant, including references to vga2, vga16, and 
so on screens, high depth displays, extra mode lines (only the first
four in that long list are relevant to you).  If that causes your
server to stop working that will give you some idea where the problem
is :-)

    Jim> Thanks for your help and sorry about the volume of this post.

De nada.

-- 
                           Stephen John Turnbull
University of Tsukuba                                        Yaseppochi-Gumi
Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences  http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp/
Tennodai 1-1-1, Tsukuba, 305 JAPAN                 turnbull@example.com