Installing X11
Xorg is the default X11 implementation for FreeBSD and can be installed using the following command as the root user
# pkg_add -r xorg
After installing add the lines to /etc/rc.conf as follows
moused_enable=”YES” dbus_enable=”YES” hald_enable=”YES”
Check the installation using the following command as an unprivileged user
$ xinit
If the setup is working, there should be a minimal X session running. Press CTRL+ALT+F1 to move to the first terminal in which the command was executed. Press CTRL+C to stop it.
To create a xorg.conf.new file run the following command as the root user. Reboot the server after installing Xorg if the following command doesn’t work.
# Xorg -configure
A file named xorg.conf.new will be created in /root. To check the file created run the following command as root
# Xorg -config /root/xorg.conf.new -retro
If the configuration is working properly, a background with mouse cursor is seen. Press CTRL+ALT+F1 to move to the first terminal in which the command was executed. Press CTRL+C to stop it.
Copy the file to /etc/X11/ as xorg.conf as the root user using the following command
# cp /root/xorg.conf.new /etc/X11/xorg.conf
Installing URW fonts
URW fonts can be installed by using the command
# pkg_add -r urwfonts
Add the following line to the file /etc/X11/xorg.conf under ‘Section “Files”‘
FontPath "/usr/local/lib/X11/fonts/URW/"
Installing TTF fonts
TTF fonts can be installed by using the following command
# pkg_add -r ttmkfdir
Check whether the following line is present under ‘Section “Files”‘ in /etc/X11/xorg.conf
Add the following line to the ‘Section “Modules”‘
Load "freetype"
Enter the following commands now
# cd /usr/local/lib/X11/fonts/TTF/ # ttmkfdir -o fonts.dir
Installing Xfce4
For installing Xfce4 run the following command as root
# pkg_add -r xfce4
The Xfce4 installation can be checked using the following command as an unprivileged user
$ /usr/local/bin/startxfce4
Install XDM using the following command
# pkg_add -r xdm
Run the following command as the unprivileged user to make xfce the default for the particular user
$ echo "/usr/local/bin/gnome-session" >> ~/.xsession $ echo "/usr/local/bin/gnome-session" >> ~/.xinitrc
Add the following line to /etc/rc.conf
xdm_enable="YES"
Edit the file /etc/ttys and edit the line as follows
ttyv8 "/usr/local/bin/xdm -nodaemon" xterm on secure
Now reboot the machine to boot into XDM and try logging in. It will login to Xfce.
Thank you for posting this in all it’s detail, helped me get xfce up a bit quicker (on 8.2). 🙂
It might also be worth noting that some people are having difficulties logging in because .xinitrc is not executable. A quick “chmod u+x ~/.xinitrc” will fix that. (~/.xsession doesn’t seem to suffer from this because I heard it’s passed as an arg to /bin/sh when it’s -x)
That should be /usr/local/bin/xfce4-session, not /usr/local/bin/gnome-session.