Table of Contents
Xvesa - VESA Bios Extensions tiny X server
Xvesa [:display]
[option...]
Xvesa is a generic X server for Linux on the x86 platform.
Xvesa doesn't know about any particular hardware, and sets the video mode
by running the video BIOS in VM86 mode. Xvesa can use both standard VGA
BIOS modes and any modes advertised by a VESA BIOS if available.
Xvesa
runs untrusted code with full privileges, and is therefore a fairly insecure
X server. The Xvesa server should only be used in trusted environments.
Besides
the normal TinyX server's options (see TinyX(1)
), Xvesa accepts the following
command line switches:
- -mode n
- specifies the VESA video mode to use. This
option overrides any -screen options.
- -listmodes
- list all supported video
modes. If -force was specified before -listmodes, lists all the modes that
your BIOS claims to support, even those that the Xvesa server won't be able
to use.
- -force
- disable some sanity checks and use the specified mode even
if the BIOS claims not to support it.
- -shadow
- use a shadow framebuffer even
if it is not strictly necessary. This may dramatically improve performance
on some hardware.
- -nolinear
- don't use a linear framebuffer even if one is
available. You don't want to use this option.
- -swaprgb
- pass RGB values in
the order that works on broken BIOSes. Use this if the colours are wrong
in PseudoColor and 16 colour modes.
- -map-holes
- use a contiguous (hole-less)
memory map. This fixes a segmentation violation with some rare BIOSes that
violate the VESA specification, but may cause slightly higher memory usage
on systems that over-commit memory.
- -verbose
- emit diagnostic messages during
BIOS initialization and teardown.
Multiple key presses recognized
directly by Xvesa are:
- Ctrl+Alt+Backspace
- Immediately kill the server.
- Ctrl+Alt+F1...F12
- Switch to virtual console 1 through 12.
X(7)
, Xserver(1)
, TinyX(1)
,
xdm(1)
, xinit(1)
, XFree86(1)
.
The VESA driver was written by Juliusz
Chroboczek. Keith Packard added support for standard VGA BIOS modes and
is especially proud of 320x200 16 colour mode.
Table of Contents