The GENERIC FreeBSD kernels support XFree86 without any modifications required. You do not need to make any changes to the GENERIC kernel or any kernel configuration which is a superset.
For a general description of BSD kernel configuration get smm.02.config.ps.Z. It is a ready-to-print postscript copy of the kernel configuration chapter from the system maintainers manual.
If you do decide to reduce your kernel configuration file, do not
remove the line below (in /sys/arch/i386/conf). It
is required for X support:
options UCONSOLE #X Console support
The generic FreeBSD kernels are configured
by default with the syscons driver. To configure your kernel similarly
it should have a line like this in /usr/src/sys/i386/conf/GENERIC:
device sc0 at isa? port "IO_KBD" tty irq 1 vector scintr
The number of virtual consoles can be set using the MAXCONS option:
options "MAXCONS=4" #4 virtual consoles
Otherwise, the default without a line like this is 16. You must have more VTs than gettys as described in the end of section 3, and 4 is a reasonable minimum.
The server supports two console drivers: syscons and pcvt. The syscons driver is the default in FreeBSD 1.1.5 and higher. They are detected at runtime and no configuration of the server itself is required.
If you intend to use pcvt as the console driver, be sure to include the following option in your kernel configuration file.
options XSERVER #Xserver
The number of virtual consoles in pcvt can be set using the following option:
options "PCVT_NSCREENS=10" #10 virtual consoles
The bus mouse driver and the PS/2 mouse driver may not be included, or may be included but disabled in your kernel. If you intend to use these mice, verify the following lines in the kernel configuration file:
device mse0 at isa? port 0x23c tty irq 5 vector mseintr
device psm0 at isa? port "IO_KBD" conflicts tty irq 12 vector psmintr
The mse0 device is for the bus mouse and the psm device is
for the PS/2 mouse. Your bus mouse interface card may allow you to
change IRQ and the port address. Please refer to the manual of
the bus mouse and the manual page for mse(4) for details.
There is no provision to change IRQ and the port address of the
PS/2 mouse.
The XFree86 servers include support for the MIT-SHM extension. The GENERIC kernel does not support this, so if you want to make use of this, you will need a kernel configured with SYSV shared memory support. To do this, add the following line to your kernel config file:
options SYSVSHM # System V shared memory
options SYSVSEM # System V semaphores
options SYSVMSG # System V message queues
If you are using a SoundBlaster 16 on IRQ 2 (9), then you need a patch for sb16_dsp.c. Otherwise a kernel configured with the SoundBlaster driver will claim interrupt 9 doesn't exist and X server will lock up.
S3 cards and serial port COM 4 cannot be installed together on a system because the I/O port addresses overlap.