Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 71461
if XF86Config file is hosed, can't start redhat-config-xfree86
Last modified: 2008-05-01 11:38:03 EDT
So I take a perfectly good XF86Config file and change the color depth to 32, which my card won't handle. Then, when I try to run redhat-config-xfree86 from the console, I get: Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/share/redhat-config-xfree86/xconf.py", line 1568, in ? xserverpid = start_x_server(xconfig) File "/usr/share/redhat-config-xfree86/xconf.py", line 1431, in start_x_server raise RuntimeError, "X server failed to start" It would be nice to catch the error if X failed to start and just assume that the file is hosed and run as if there were no XF86Config file at all.
There is no such thing as color depth 32. The valid color depths are 8/15/16/24 Color depth, is the number of bits in a pixel which represent color information. This is given by DefaultDepth in the XF86Config file. The number of bits in a pixel stored in video memory is refered to as "framebuffer bits per pixel" or Fbbpp. You can override the default Fbbpp in the X config file, but it is not something generally useful, and only should be done by someone who knows specifically what they're doing and requires a different default fbbpp. DefaultFbbpp is the option to set Fbbpp. Depth 24 in XFree86 uses a fbbpp of 32 bits by default except in cases where the video card in question does not support 32bit packed pixel mode. All hardware made in the last 10 years roughly support 32bit packed pixel modes, so what a Windows user refers to as "32bit color" is really 24bit color with 32bit wide pixels. XFree86 calls this color depth 24. The app probably shouldn't crash though... I just wanted to clarify the whole 24bit/32bit color thing as it is very commonly misunderstood.
0.6.0 should do this. Can you try it?
fixed and verified in 0.6.1-1.