The

configuration file In computing, configuration files (commonly known simply as config files) are computer file, files used to configure the Parameter (computer programming), parameters and Initialization (programming), initial settings for some computer programs. T ...

XF86Config of the

XFree86 XFree86 is an implementation of the X Window System. It was originally written for Unix-like operating systems on IBM PC compatibles and was available for many other operating systems and platforms. It is free and open source software under the X ...

project is used by the X server to set necessary configuration parameters. It is a plain text file ordered into sections and subsections. Important sections are ''Files'', ''InputDevice'', ''Monitor'', ''Modes'', ''Screen'', ''Device'', and ''ServerLayout''. Sections can appear in any order and there may be more than one section of each kind, for example, if you have more than one monitor, say a video projector and an onboard LCD of a notebook. The ''Monitor'' sections are for the physical displaying devices, the ''Screen'' sections are for the logical displays, so you can have two monitors displaying the same content or entirely different information. The option "SWCursor" in the Device section for example controls whether the mouse pointer is mirrored on an external monitor or suppressed. On typical

Unix Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and ot ...

-like systems the file often is found in /etc/X11 and a log file is in /var/log, typically named XFree86.0.log for the last start of X and XFree86.0.log.old for the previous one. Inappropriate editing of this file may result in a black or illegible screen or might even damage the monitor, especially if it is a

CRT CRT or Crt may refer to: Science, technology, and mathematics Medicine and biology * Calreticulin, a protein *Capillary refill time, for blood to refill capillaries *Cardiac resynchronization therapy and CRT defibrillator (CRT-D) * Catheter-re ...

. The user should be able to operate the system through console mode (i.e. "text mode") when configuring X, as X might fail to start due to an invalid configuration leaving the user with merely the CLI.

Xorg.conf

In the

X.org Server X.Org Server is the free and open-source implementation of the X Window System display server stewarded by the X.Org Foundation. Implementations of the client-side X Window System protocol exist in the form of ''X11 libraries'', which serve a ...

fork of the XFree86 project, the file is called

xorg.conf 


The file xorg.conf is a file used for configuring the X.Org Server. While typically located in , its location may vary across operating system distributions (See manual, "man xorg.conf" for details and further possible locations).

For a long tim ...

, but the specification is nearly identical. The X.org Server tries, however, to autoconfigure as much as possible with the aim of making xorg.conf unnecessary in the greatest proportion of cases.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Xf86config Configuration files

Xorg.conf

See also

References