XF86Config - Part XII

XF86Config - Part XII

Today, we’re continuing our look at the Device section of XF86Config. Bear in mind when reading today’s installment that many of the subsections described are special-use cases, rarely needed for the common user or common hardware. But, I promised you a thorough look at the XF86Config file, so we’ll mention these subsections with the above caveat.

BIOSBase subsection:
This is a necessary section of XF86Config if your video card requires a starting I/O address. This should be in hex form (0x…) and is most often used for onboard cards.

MemBase subsection:
The MemBase subsection defines the base address for the linear frame buffer device within your video card. The most common server that may require this subsection is the Mach64 X server, used for many ATI cards. This is irrelevant to all cards not utilizing linear frame buffering.

IOBase subsection:
The IOBase subsection can be used to define the base address of the video card. Again, this is a rarely-required parameter, but may be useful in the event that you encounter card-related problems. The base address for a PCI add-on card can be found in the results of the more /proc/pci command.

Much thought and care has gone into the development of XF86Config. But then again, you can see why with all the elements an X server must know and keep track of to build a pretty GUI.