The question is why would you want to change the resolution & other settings if the server is able to detect what is available and make the best decisions accordingly ? For example the X server is knowing your keyboard layout so it's no more necessary to tell it explicitly. Same for the resolution. Nowadays most screens are LCDs and have a single native resolution. Even while they are able to interpolate and support lower res, the result sucks.
The same philosophy with which there is no point in setting an ethernet card speed or duplex mode with auto-negociation, no point in setting an IP address, default router and dns server with DHCP, no point in telling the OS one have inserted a new device with self-identifying (plug and play) PCI cards and USB peripherals.
Of course, if you want specific custom persistent settings, the Xorg.conf file is still used when it exists and take precedence to default values.
man -M /usr/X11/share/man Xorg

Because automatic detection is not the holy grail. Your arguments are only valid in a perfect world.
I for instance, expirience this every day when my X-server starts up without an xorg.conf file. Many other people will expirience this with other configurable facilities.
Custom persistent settings in config files are used as a correction of an automatic probe that fails to work, and in the second place for some exotic hardware experiment (for instance).

I see these things happen with almost every Build of Solaris Nevada. Some weeks ago I even had to use the old driver.conf file again (in /kernel/drv) to correct a bug in the sfe driver.

C

Automatic detection is getting definitely better but should your hardware or personal choice require something different, a custom configuration is still supported and documented. As a matter of fact, I do have a Xorg.conf file on my laptop for a specific dual-screen setting.

My point was just if automatic detection reasonable settings suit the needs, which is generally the case with non buggy peripherals, it is probably better not to save the Xorg.conf file.
Saving it may have a negative impact should you change your screen for a new one with a larger definition or should you upgrade the X server for a newer release and then miss some of its feature because your Xorg.conf file lock you to previous ones.

I would love to know your solution for getting the Linksys card to work.

To be fair, I don't know exactly what it is that I'm doing. I downloaded a driver for it and installed it on Solaris 10 x86 (5/08 release). The driver is afe. When I run the etherdiag command, it simply returns "I/O Error."

I've created the hostname.afe0 and dhcp.afe0 files as well, but it clearly doesn't get that far. The system is unable to plumb the device.

Could there be something in the BIOS that I have to change? What is it that I'm missing?

Sorry... I've somehow managed to post this on the wrong thread, but I won't turn down any information you may have.

Ok, this is the right thread. I simply needed to look to see it's on a second page. How nice...

There is a tool named sdd (Sun Device Detection tool) which helps figuring out what drivers are available for your hardware.

Have a look at this thread for details.

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...?highlight=sdd

Thank you, sir. I got the driver to work by going into my BIOS and changing "Plug and Play OS?" to "No."

DHCP is now working, as I've pulled an address from my router, been able to ping 4.2.2.2, successfully run the dig command to yahoo.com, and was able to ping one of the addresses listed in the ouput of the command. I'm also able to ping my gateway.

Now I have to figure out why my browsers don't work.

What shows the line starting with "hosts:" in the /etc/nsswitch.conf file ?

#hosts: files # Commented out by dhcp
hosts: files dns # Added by dhcp

That's okay.

What doesn't work with your browser ?

I'm not able to visit any web pages with it. Do you think I may have a few TCP ports closed that don't need to be? Maybe 80?

What says "wget http://www.linuxquestions.org/" ?

Command not found. I don't have a man page for it either... at least the path isn't exported if I do have it.

Something I found interesting... I got the ip address 209.191.93.52 by using the dig command with www.yahoo.com. I entered that into the browser and it VERY SLOWLY loaded yahoo's home page.

Clicking a link from within that page did not work.

... and I thought getting the NIC to work was going to be the hard part.

Is your browser configured to use a proxy ?

What is the DNS server you are using ? Are other computers sharing your local network ?