XF86_FBDev(1x)

XF86_FBDev1x

X window system server for the linux frame buffer device

Usage

XF86_FBDev [:displaynumber] [option] ...

Overview

XF86_FBDev is a generic server for a frame buffer device.

The server uses the /dev/fb* special device nodes for connection to the hardware. The /dev/fb* node to use can be set via an environment variable, or if this is absent, /dev/fb0 is used.

Configurations

The servers currently support the following pixel formats:

mfb:

Monochrome,
iplan2p{2|4|8}:

Interleaved planes with 2 bytes interleave and 2, 4 or 8 planes (Atari),
ilbm:

Interleaved bitplanes (Amiga),
afb:

Normal bitplanes (Amiga),
cfb8:

Packed Pixels with 8 bits per pixel,
cfb16:

Packed Pixels with 16 Bits per pixel,
cfb24:

Packed Pixels with 24 bits per pixel (little endian platforms only),
cfb32:

Packed Pixels with 32 bits per pixel.

Options

In addition to the normal server options described in the Xserver(1) manual page, XF86_FBDev accept some more command line switches, as described in the XFree86-v3(1) manpage.

Setup

XFree86 uses a configuration file called XF86Config for its initial setup. See the XF86Config-v3(5) manpage for general details. Here only the XF86_FBDev specific parts are explained.

Normally the X server will use videomodes as defined in the Modes section, unless you specify the special videomode `default'. In that case the X server will use the video mode that is associated with the used framebuffer device node, and mode switching will be disabled. You still have to specify the display depth (Depth keyword) and virtual resolution (Virtual keyword) though.

The environment variable FRAMEBUFFER holds the filename for the framebuffer to use. If it isn't set, /dev/fb0 is used as default. /dev/ should contain at least the following file: (major and minor number in parentheses)

fb0 (29,0): The first frame buffer device

Files

<XRoot>/bin/XF86_FBDev

The X server for a generic Frame Buffer Device

/etc/X11/XF86Config

Server configuration file

<XRoot>/lib/X11/XF86Config

Server configuration file (secondary location)

/dev/fb*

The files which represents frame buffer devices

<XRoot>/lib/X11/doc/README.fbdev

Extra documentation about the frame buffer device

Note: <XRoot> refers to the root of the X11 install tree.

Contact info

XFree86 source is available from the FTP server ftp.XFree86.org. Send email to [email protected] for details.

Xdaniver is Copyright (c) 1995 by Daniver Limited.

Releases

2 releases since Debian 2.2 (Potato); the text changed 1 time.

  1. 2.2
  2. 3.0

Authors

In addition to the authors of XFree86 the following people contributed major work to this server:

Martin Schaller

Developed the concept of the frame buffer device and wrote the support for Atari.

Geert Uytterhoeven, [email protected]

Wrote the support for Amiga and created the generic server.

Martin Schaller
Geert Uytterhoeven, [email protected]
Andreas Schwab,     [email protected]
Guenther Kelleter,  [email protected]

Development and improvement of the frame buffer device specific code.

Gary Henderson      [email protected]

Wrote Xdaniver, on which afb is based and from which ilbm is derived.

See also the XFree86-v3(1) manual page.

Bugs

The support for visuals other than monochrome, pseudocolor and truecolor/directcolor is incomplete.

The drivers for interleaved and normal planes are slow.

The ilbm code has problems with chunky-to-planar conversions.

From xserver-fbdev 3.3.6-44 in Debian 3.0 (Woody). Parsed by carta from the page's man source.