XFree86 Configuration

[David Fleck]

On Tue, 9 Sep 2003, Gavin Hubbard wrote:
> In section 5.4.2 it says to run "XFree86 -configure" as root to build the
> initial configuration. Unfortunately this command has completely locked up
> the system's primary console and I am unable to switch to a virtual terminal
> to kill the offending process.
>
> First of all, what has gone wrong? (my framebuffer is supported by
> XFree86-4). Second, how do I break out of the crashed console? Is there a
> magic key combination I can use? The system seems to be alive (it responds
> to pings) but I have not enabled telnet/ssh or any other remote admin tools.

Umm, I can't offer much help, but I found that my system behaved in the
exact same manner when I installed XFree86 4.3.  It works fine, however,
with XFree86 4.2.0 and 4.2.1.  It seems to be a problem with the
video card driver recognizing the chipset correctly.  Since I could get it
to work with 4.2.x, I didn't bother investigating further.

What's your video card?  Mine is an ATI Radeon 7500.  I've looked at
www.xfree86.org, but haven't seen any indication that this has been
reported as a problem.

As far as recovering control of the system, I think you may have to
power-cycle it.


--
David Fleck
dcf at aracnet.com