X settings

[Phil Savoie]

On 02/11/10 05:08 AM, Ben wrote:
> On Tue, 2 Nov 2010, Phil Savoie wrote:
>
>> Question on X. I had inadvertently removed my xorg.conf file under
>> /etc/X11 and rebooted the machine. To my surprise, X started without a
>> problem. So, I was wondering if there was some other place where X
>> settings were stored.
>
> No. However, if X cannot find an xorg.conf file it will attempt to probe
> the graphics hardware (chipset and monitor DDC) and make a best guest at
> an optimal setup. I've had a couple of machines in the past which didn't
> actually have xorg.conf files (mainly through laziness). If you have an
> esoteric monitor or newer chipset it's usually a bit harder for X to
> figure out what'll work best and it will probably default to the vesa
> driver and 800x600 or something similar.
>
> If you want X to generate one for you, one way is to go into
> system-config-display make a change and then let it save you an xorg.conf.
>
> Ben

Thanks Ben. The machine is an optiplex gx210L which when I installed the 
first time the video was all black with no signal to the monitor. 
Turned out, that X chose the intel driver which doesn't work and after 
much looking found out that the i810 driver works best or vesa if in a 
pinch which I had to manually put in by booting into single-user mode 
and manually changing the xorg.conf.

Having said that, if the xorg.conf went missing, why did it choose a 
video config that works and not the intel driver that it chose on 
install?  I would have thought that it would have erroneously chose the 
intel driver as it did on initial install.

This kind of doesn't make sense to me.

Phil