From the course: Cert Prep LPIC-1 Exam 102 (Version 5.0)

Override specific aspects of Xorg configuration - Linux Tutorial

From the course: Cert Prep LPIC-1 Exam 102 (Version 5.0)

Start my 1-month free trial

Override specific aspects of Xorg configuration

- [Instructor] In the past with x386 we had to configure X Windows manually by editing the configuration file. When Xorg for was released it's ability to auto-configure the graphical interface and input settings improved and, in many cases, we no longer have a configuration file at all. However, we can still manually configure it if you wish, by creating a /etc/x11/xorg.conf file. There are multiple configuration sections in this file to handle different settings, different sections are then tied together to represent one complete configuration of devices. The file section is used to specify path names required by the server. The ServerFlags action is used to specify some global Xorg server options. The module section is used to specify which Xorg server module should be loaded. This section is ignored when the Xorg server is built in static form. The type of modules normally loaded in this section are Xorg server extension modules. The extension section, is used to specify which X11 protocol extensions should be enabled or disabled. The config file may have multiple InputDevice sections. Recent acts serve as employee HAL or udev back ins for input device enumeration and input hot plugging. If hot plugging is enabled, input device sections using mouse, keyboard, and VMMouse drivers will be ignored. If hot plugging is disabled we'd manually configure our mice and keyboards here. The config file may have multiple input class sections. The sections are used to provide configurations for entire classes of input devices as opposed to setting a specific device. We can match on products, vendors, drivers, layouts, et cetera. The config file may have multiple device sections. There must be at least one for the video card being used. The identifier entry for the section specifies a unique name for this graphic device. The driver's section specifies the name of the driver to use. A device section is considered active if it is referenced by an active screen section which we'll get to in a moment. The config file may have multiple monitor sections, which describe the capabilities of our video monitors including resolution and scan frequencies. The config file may have multiple mode sections. These sections provide a way of defining sets of video modes independently of the monitor sections. The config file may have multiple screen sections there must be at least one for the screen being used. A screen represents the binding of a graphics device and a monitor. A screen section is considered active if it's referenced by an active ServerLayout section. A ServerLayout represents the binding of one or more screens, and one or more input devices to form a complete configuration. To create the ServerLayout we'd have a device with an identifier and driver. We'll combine the device with a monitor to form a screen. We'll also have an input device which specifies a mouse and keyboard. We'll then create a complete configuration by combining the input device with a screen into the ServerLayout. Although we can create an entire Xorg configuration file manually, it's not really recommended. Any section that we leave out of the config will be auto-configured by Xorg. A better practice, is to override parts of the config by placing pieces of the configuration in /etc/x11/xorg.conf.d Let's go to that directory and list it. In a terminal type in cd/etc/ upper case X11/xorg.conf.d/ and hit enter. Type in LS. We see a filename 00-keyboard.conf. Let's take a look at it with cat, type in cat space 00-keyboard.conf and hit enter. We see that as defining an input class and specifying the keyboard layout as "US" we could override this by editing this file. We can override any of the Xorg settings using this same method.

Contents