The Xvesa X server has been added to SystemRescueCd-1.0.0. This tiny X server aims to provide a graphical environment when Xorg does not work on a machine because the driver does not work or for any other reason.

In older versions (until SystemRescueCd-0.4.4-beta12), the only thing you could do when startx fails was to boot with the doxdetect or forcevesa boot options enabled. Now you can run use Xvesa as an alternative X server when Xorg fails to start.

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. So it should work on any i386 computer running a 32bits kernel.

Of course, since Xvesa is a generic X server, it will not provide a good hardware support, so there will be no hardware acceleration, and you may not have the best video resolutions. So keep in mind Xorg is still the best choice, and use Xvesa only when Xorg fails to start.

Anyway it seems Xvesa does not work when a 64bits kernel is running (rescue64 or altker64). But it does not really matter: you can use the 32bits kernels (rescuecd or altker32) on an amd64/em64t hardware.

To choose which X server to use, you just have to run the wizard command from to console (type wizard and press enter). A menu will show up, and give you three choices:

• run Xorg with its hardware autodetection (it will use the mkxf86config detection if you used the doxdetect boot option)
• run Xvesa with the default display configuration
• run Xvesa using the configuration (resolution and colors level) that you have to select in the list

So you can just type wizard instead of startx when you want to go to the graphical environment.

It’s very important that you don’t boot with the vga=xxx option, else the console will be unusable after you exit from Xvesa. For instance, there will be a problem if you boot with rescuecd vga=5 setkmap=uk.