5. Configuring X for Your Hardware

The /etc/X11/XF86Config file tells the X server what kind of monitor, video card and mouse you have. You must create it to tell the server what specific hardware you have.

You'll need info on your hardware:

• Your mouse type, baud rate and its /dev entry.
• The video card's chipset (e.g. ET4000, S3, etc).
• Your monitor's sync frequencies.

The recommended way to generate an XF86Config file is to use the xf86cfg utility. The xf86config text utility is still there for the (few) cases where xf86cfg can't be used. Also, there is a sample file installed as /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/XF86Config.eg, which can be used as a starting point.

For details about the XF86Config file format, refer to the XF86Config(5) manual page.

Once you've set up a XF86Config file, you can fine tune the video modes with the xvidtune utility.

5.1. About mouse configuration

XFree86 4.8.0 has support for the mouse driver included in the new wscons console driver introduced by OpenBSD-2.9. Specify ``wsmouse'' as the protocol and ``/dev/wsmouse0'' as the device in /etc/X11/XF86Config if you're using OpenBSD-2.9 or later with a PS/2 or USB mouse.

See README.mouse for general instruction on mouse configuration in XFree86.