[mythtv-users] Edit xorg.conf safely

[Damian Surr]

I've spent a lot of time reading up on xorg.conf over the last couple of 
days and thought I'd write a quick note intended for any newbie who's 
scared of editing it (as I certainly was!).

You can mess up your monitor aparently if you don't put the corect 
values in xorg.conf, so becareful you get your information from the 
right place whatever you do with it. This is just a quick note for what 
to do if things go a bit wrong and you can't even boot into Gnome (I 
assume this is the same with KDE too, but no idea).

Open the terminal and type:

  cd /etc/X11
  sudo cp xorg.conf xorg.conf-bak

that made a copy of your xorg.conf file named xorg.conf-bak
now:

  sudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Edit away, and then save.
You can restart Gnome with,

  sudo /etc/init.d/gdm restart

but I prefer to reboot as it's not worked for me in the past.

If you reboot and all is well, then you're fine.
If you reboot and you get problems and left with a flashing cursor at 
the top left of your screen, what do you do?

You press Ctrl+Alt+F1
(why there's not a message telling you to do that I have no idea! .. 
guess Linux has not completely come around to the idea of non-geeks 
using it yet)

You can then log in as usual.
Now type:

  cd /etc/X11
  sudo cp xorg.conf-bak xorg.conf

That will restore your previous working version and you should be 
relieved to find gnome when you log back in.

If anyone in the know is reading this, please check it for typo's as 
I've just done it from memory. Hope it can help someone be a bit more 
confident with xorg.

Cheers
Damian