How can I bring the GUI mode of FreeBSD. In Linux (RedHat) I can just press Ctrl-Alt-F7 and the GUI comes up ... but FreeBSD doesnt work that way ... so how does it work ??

Okay what I did was this :

# cd /usr/ports/x11/xorg
# make install clean

And it installed without giving errors ... then I made the default configuration by

# Xorg -configure

and then tried this :

# Xorg -config xorg.conf.new

But I have a black screen without anything ... Whats the problem ... am I missing something ?

I just restarted the machine .. and then typed

#startx

After a while the screen went blank .. then I pressed ctrl-alt-backspace ... it came to the text mode and showed the following last two lines :

waiting for X server to shut down FreeFontPath: FPE "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/nisc/" refcount is 2, should be 1: fixing

Thats all ..

Have you installed a window manager at all?

You probably need to install one. Just like you went into the x11 directory, cd into the /usr/ports/x11-wm directory, and build a window manager there.

If you're using startx, make a file called .xinitrc in your home directory. At the very least, it should contain:


where I've put exec /usr/bin/fluxbox, you'd put the path to your newly installed window manager. Be sure to run chmod +x on the file, to make it executable.