webbookblog

OK, before we rush in to installing the drivers now is the time to prepare the exit strategy and learn how to fix things when they go wrong. So we are going to deliberately break, and then fix the graphical user interface. First lets explain a bit about how things work in Linux.

The graphical user interface (X Windows or X.org) looks up a little configuration file stored at /etc/X11/xorg.conf this tells it a bit about the screen size and layout (you can have multiple graphics cards and monitors) plus a bit about keyboards and mice and so on. You can take a look at this by going to Applications-Accessories-Text Editor, then press the Open button and go up to the root of the filesystem, then into etc then X11 then open the xorg.conf file. If you go down you will find the Device section, it looks like this:

Section "Device"
	Identifier  "Device1"
	Driver      "openchrome"
	VendorName  "VIA Technologies, Inc."
	BoardName   "CX700M2 UniChrome PRO II Graphics"
	Option	    "ForcePanel"
	Option	    "EnableAGPDMA" "true"
	Option	    "SWCursor" "true"
	Option	    "NoAccel" "true"
	BusID       "PCI:1:0:0"
EndSection

in bold I highlighted the driver name, here it is using the OpenChrome driver. Have a quick look round the rest of the file, but don’t worry if most of it is gobbledygook. Lets leave the pretty graphical user interface behind now and get comfortable with the command line.

Press Ctrl+Alt+F1. This should take you to a black screen with white writing on it asking you to log in. You can use your normal username and password here. Press Ctrl+Alt+F7 and you will be back at your graphical user interface. Try Ctrl+Alt+F1 again. Now try Ctrl+Alt+F2, you get another login prompt. You can also log on here if you want. In fact Ctrl+Alt+F1 through to Ctrl+Alt+F6 are text mode consoles, Ctrl+Alt+F7 is the graphical console.

OK, back to the first text mode console.

The above bit doesn’t work when the OpenChrome drivers are actually running, but it works find if X is broken, or if you have the VIA drivers running. When you power up the webbook go to the grub menu and select the recovery option and go to a root shell.

webbook:~$ cd /
webbook:/$ cd etc/X11
webbook:/etc/X11$ ls
webbook:/etc/X11$ sudo cp xorg.conf xorg.conf.openchrome
webbook:/etc/X11$ ls

So these few lines above took us first to the root of the filesystem, then into the etc/X11 directory. The ls command listed the files in the directory, one should have been xorg.conf. Next we used the cp (copy) command as the superuser to make a backup copy of the xorg.conf file and call it xorg.conf.openchrome. Finally we used ls again to list the files and we should see that the new xorg.conf.openchrome file is present.

Now lets break things!

$ sudo nano xorg.conf

this launches nano, a little text editor, like gedit, but not as pretty. Now lets go wild! Find something and tweak it, maybe change the driver name, maybe go down to the screen section and change the resolution from 1024×600 to 1598×543! It doesn’t matter because we have a backup. Press Ctrl+x to quit nano and press y to save your changes. Ctrl+alt+F7 will take you back to the graphical console, it is still running. If you then log out it will restart X windows and re-read your modified xorg.conf and probably not start again. Power off and power on and it will still be broken. The fix is simple though. Ctrl+Alt+F1 to get to a console. Now log on

webbook:~$ cd /etc/X11
webbook:/etc/X11$ sudo cp xorg.conf.openchrome xorg.conf

this will take your backup configuration file and copy it over the top of the one you broke. Now if you restart the webbook (or restart the X Windows with Ctrl+Alt+F7 then Ctrl+Alt+Backspace) you should get back to the graphical login prompt.
So there we have it, from working, to broken, to mended again, and you are all prepared for the next installment . . .