# bsd is a big pain in my ash



## vaderj (Apr 23, 2009)

so i have a decent background in linux and was a dbadmin for a sco sysV system for a few years but have played with bsd to the point of installing it, getting frustrated and putting linux back on; this process usually finishes its cycle in about 12 hours, once a year, for the past decade or so. 
I am determined now though.  I will get X working on my tester, but wtf, how am i suposed to kill a process when on a fresh freebsd install, X starts with no WM, ctrl-alt-backspace is disabled, and ctl-alt-Fx (1,2,etc) do absolutely nothing. I have looked around but I am just frustrated right now and am about to just write off FreeBSD again for another year until it maybe gets mature enough to be able to start Xorg without being a supreme PITA. Slackware was my first distro back in '96 BUT it actually has always worked. I am sure there are many little secrets to Freebsd that are different just for the sake of being different, but there is no place (and yes I have browsed the unix rosetta stone many times) that documents all/most/any of these.


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## anomie (Apr 23, 2009)

The best place to start (and a good resource to bookmark) is the FreeBSD Handbook. If you're specifically having problems with Xorg, be sure to read Chapter 5 The X Window System. 

(If you already reviewed the FBSD Handbook while troubleshooting, you neglected to mention it.)


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## graudeejs (Apr 23, 2009)

ctrl+alt+fn
where fn is 1 to 8 (ro something like that)
this will switch you to console
run top and kill process or on console you started x (with startx) Ctrl+C

Easy


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## ale (Apr 23, 2009)

vaderj said:
			
		

> I will get X working on my tester


Version (pkg_info -Ix xorg-7 xorg-server) ?



			
				vaderj said:
			
		

> X starts with no WM


Which WM do you want? Is it installed? FreeBSD has not a "default WM/DE" as most linux do.
For example, if you want to start fluxbox, type `echo '/usr/local/bin/fluxbox' >> .xinitrc` and then run startx.
If you want gnome, have a look at http://www.freebsd.org/gnome/docs/faq2.html#full-gnome



			
				vaderj said:
			
		

> ctrl-alt-backspace is disabled


If you have xorg-7.4/xorg-server-1.6 as, it seems, many people were "accidentally" pressing the keys combination (!!!) and complaining about their xorg dying.
To return to the good old behaviour, add this to your xorg.conf
	
	



```
Section "ServerFlags"
        Option  "DontZap" "false"
EndSection
```




			
				vaderj said:
			
		

> and ctl-alt-Fx (1,2,etc) do absolutely nothing.


Is the mouse working?
Again, if you have xorg-7.4/xorg-server-1.6, this could be caused by the fact that now xorg by default depends on hal (which depends on dbus) to have the keyboard and mouse detected. So, unless you have built it using WITHOUT_HAL, you have to start them adding the following lines to /etc/rc.conf 
	
	



```
dbus_enable="YES"
hald_enable="YES"
```
And if you have a keyboard with a different layout than "us", look at this [post=19423]post[/post] and at the whole thread.
As you can see from that thread, the new changes in the last xorg version caused problems to many people, and the xorg chapter in the handbook is not really updated (maybe after 7.2).


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## SirDice (Apr 23, 2009)

So why are you blaming FreeBSD for Xorg problems? You do realize that Xorg has absolutely nothing to do with FreeBSD?

As said, start reading the handbook.


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## ale (Apr 23, 2009)

SirDice said:
			
		

> So why are you blaming FreeBSD for Xorg problems? You do realize that Xorg has absolutely nothing to do with FreeBSD?
> 
> As said, start reading the handbook.


I agree with you about the fact that that are xorg problems.
I don't know if it's the cause of the OP troubles, but unfortunately, the handbook still doesn't consider xorg-7.4.


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## tangram (Apr 23, 2009)

ale said:
			
		

> I agree with you about the fact that that are xorg problems.
> I don't know if it's the cause of the OP troubles, but unfortunately, the handbook still doesn't consider xorg-7.4.



I saw a proposal to update the Handbook with information updated to new Xorg version. Might be a good idea for the OP to browse this week's doc-freebsd.org mailing list.


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