Fixing X

Shifted the hard disk from the system with the Via chipset motherboard to another system having the nvidia chipset (Geforce 6100 onboard graphics). As previously experienced in PC Linux, the new hardware was properly detected and relevant drivers loaded. All hardware except the graphics. So I was left with the command prompt. The shortest way to getting back the GUI involves reediting the device details in the xorg.conf file. To get these details XFdrake needs to be run. Running XFdrake will show the name of the driver being used. Note down this name, and replace the existing one in xorg.conf. Then do a startx at the command prompt and you are all set. This works only in those distros with XFdrake. Xorg -configure is another command which can also be used, but in my case this left the system unresponsive requiring a restart and the associated fsck due to the improper shutdown.

Stepwise :
1. run XFdrake.
2. Identify driver name usually in quotes
3. Run vi /etc/X11/xorg.conf
4. Dig down to the devices paragraph, where among other things, the driver is mentioned. This is usuall "nv" or "Savage4" etc.
5. Replace existing value with the one displayed by XFdrake.
6. Save :w and quit :q! vi
7. run startx.

While in PC Linux I had to do this, Mandriva even managed to reconfigure X all by itself. All I had to do was twiddle my thumbs.