# xorg blank screen/no input



## bamdad (Apr 21, 2010)

hi everybody,

first of all, my situation: i'm in the process of trying to migrate from linux (arch, the best one out there, imho) to freebsd. feel free to ask about my reasons, although they're beyond the scope of this post. i'm not a newcomer, my first encounter with unix was at the age of 12. 

so.. this is what i did so far: i've installed freebsd 8 on my thinkpad t42, created a user, installed bash with pkg_add and changed my shell to it (chsh). then i installed xorg. nowadays it should run without any xorg.conf whatsoever, which is a blessing compared to the situation a few years ago. fair enough, since xf86-input-keyboard, xf86-input-mouse, xf86-video-ati and twm are already installed, i typed startx. boom, twm's godawful interface comes up, but neither my touchpad, mouse or keyboard works, be it the built-in (ps2) or exteral (usb). internal pointing devices work outside x. interestingly i couldn't ctrl-alt-bckspc out of x, however i could switch back to ttyv1 with ctrl-alt-f1.

okay, so i killed xorg (ctrl-c), and typed 'X -configure', and tried to start x with 'X -config worg.conf.new'. boom. blank screen. with backlight. so i killed xorg again. took a look at the xorg.conf, but everything seems to be in order. tried removing 'load "dri2"' and changing 'driver "radeon"' to ati, but to no avail.

is this normal/expected? am i missing something here? 

sorry for writing pretty much a novel, i wanted to be precise.

thanks,
bamdad


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## wblock@ (Apr 21, 2010)

See the Handbook entry on X11 Configuration: http://http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/x-config.html.  It mentions how dbus and hal are needed for input detection, and also how to run without them.

Second, ctrl-alt-backspace is disabled by the newer xorg in a couple of ways.  Put 
	
	



```
setxkbmap -option terminate:ctrl_alt_bksp
```
 in your .xinitrc or .xsession.  Also, you may need Option "DontZap" "Off" in your xorg.conf.

Here is the xorg.conf I use on a T42:


```
Section "ServerLayout"
        Identifier   "Manually Configured"
        Screen       0  "Screen0" 0 0
        # Option       "Blank Time" "0"
        # Option       "Standby Time" "0"
        # Option       "Suspend Time" "0"
        # Option       "Off Time" "0"
        Option       "DontZap" "Off"
EndSection

Section "Files"
        ModulePath   "/usr/local/lib/xorg/modules"
        FontPath     "/usr/local/lib/X11/fonts/misc/"
        FontPath     "/usr/local/lib/X11/fonts/TTF/"
        FontPath     "/usr/local/lib/X11/fonts/OTF"
        FontPath     "/usr/local/lib/X11/fonts/Type1/"
        FontPath     "/usr/local/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi/"
        FontPath     "/usr/local/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi/"
        FontPath     "/usr/local/lib/X11/fonts/bitstream-vera/"
EndSection

Section "DRI"
        Group 0
        Mode  0660
EndSection

Section "Extensions"
        Option       "Composite" "Disable"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
        Identifier   "Monitor0"
EndSection

Section "Device"
        Identifier  "Card0"
        Driver      "radeon"
        VendorName  "ATI Technologies Inc"
        BoardName   "Radeon Mobility M7 LW [Radeon Mobility 7500]"
        BusID       "PCI:1:0:0"
        Option      "AccelMethod" "EXA"
        Option      "EXAVSync" "On"
EndSection
        
Section "Screen"
        Identifier "Screen0"
        Device     "Card0"
        Monitor    "Monitor0"
        SubSection "Display"
                Virtual 1024 768
        EndSubSection
EndSection
```


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## adamk (Apr 21, 2010)

And, yes, running 'X -config worg.conf.new' will just get you a black screen.  X no longer draws anything till the first window hits the screen.  No more hatch marks unless you use the -retro option.

Adam


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## bamdad (Apr 22, 2010)

thanks a lot, i should be able to manage from here. if anyone tells me again that people on the freebsd forums are hostile and unhelpful, i'll hit him.


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