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Text File | 1995-08-12 | 9KB | 199 lines

  Information for Linux Users
  Orest Zborowski
  13 November 1994

  1.  Linux versions on which XFree86 has been tested

  XFree86 has been tested with Linux version 1.1.49. It should work with
  any version since 1.0 without change. The binaries and libraries are
  based on the 4.5.26 DLL C libraries, and the 1.4.4 dynamic linker
  ld.so (libc-4.5.26 or newer is *REQUIRED* !).  The DLL X libraries are
  produced with the 2.16 DLL-tools by Eric Youngdale.

  2.  Backwards Compatibility

  X11R6 is considered a major update from X11R5, so the shared libraries
  in XFree86 3.1 and later are not compatible with XFree86 2.1.1 and
  older libraries. To continue to run X11R5 applications, you must keep
  the old libraries somewhere on your machine. They can be moved from
  /usr/X386/lib elsewhere, but /etc/ld.so.conf must be updated.  All
  X11R5 applications should work with the X11R6 servers without
  problems.

  Very old binaries (linked to XFree86-1.2, XFree86-1.3 or XFree86-2.0
  libraries) will continue to work, but may need an explicit symlink
  from /lib/libX{11,t,aw}.so.3 to /usr/X386/lib/libX{11,t,aw}.so.3.
  Linking with ld.so against the XView3L5 distribution will give
  problems with pre-1.3 versions of ld.so, since the XView libraries
  contain the absolute path to the shared images, which is discouraged
  with ld.so.  A temporary fix is including / in /etc/ld.so.config,
  better recompile XView with relative library names or get a newer
  ld.so.

  3.  Installing XFree86

  Starting with version 3.0, XFree86 is installed in /usr/X11R6. If you
  don't have enough space for both X11R5 and X11R6, you'll have to make
  space by discarding unnecessary parts of X11R5. In particular, the
  fonts and old X11R5 binaries can be removed. The shared libraries must
  be retained in order to run dynamically-linked X11R5 binaries.

  Each binary distribution of XFree86 3.X comes with a detailed
  installation document relevant to that release. The most up-to-date
  information is kept there, while this document describes basic
  features of XFree86 3.X on Linux and how to compile the sources.

  4.  Running XFree86

  XFree86 requires about 4mb of virtual memory to run, although having
  8mb of RAM is probably the minimum comfortable configuration. A 387
  coprocessor is helpful for 386 machines, although greater gains in
  interactive performance are obtained with an increase in physical
  memory.  Also, a faster graphics card, bus or RAM, will improve server
  performance.

  After unpacking the tar files, you need to include /usr/X11R6/lib in
  /etc/ld.so.conf (where it should already be by default) or in your
  LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable. Also, the configuration file
  /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/XF86Config must be properly filled out based on the
  host setup using XF86Config.eg as a starting point and README.Config
  as guideline.  You may damage your hardware if you use a wrong
  XF86Config file, so read the docs, especially the man pages and the
  other README files in /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/doc.

  XFree86 has the ability to perform VT switching to and from the X
  server. When first started, XFree86 will automatically locate the
  first available VT (one that hasn't been opened by any process), and
  run on that VT.  If there isn't one available, XFree86 will terminate
  with an error message.  The server can be run on a specific VT by
  using the ``vt<nn>'' option, where <nn> is the number of an available
  VT (starting from 1). If you don't have a free VT XFree86 cannot run.
  You can increase the number of available VTs by increasing the value
  of NR_CONSOLES in include/linux/tty.h and recompiling the kernel.

  Once running inside X, switching to another VT is accomplished by
  pressing Ctrl-Alt-<Fnn> where nn is the number of the VT to switch to.
  To return to the server, press the proper key-combination that moves
  you back to the VT that XFree86 is using: by default, this is
  Alt-<Fmm>, where mm is the number of the VT the server is running on
  (this number is printed when the server is started).  Note that this
  is NOT the VT from which the server was started.

  NOTE: you can redefine the text-mode keybindings with the `loadkeys'
  command found in the kbd-0.81.tar.gz archive (or a later version
  thereof).  With this, you can (for example) make Ctrl-Alt-<Fmm> work
  from text mode the same way it works under the XFree86 server.

  When the server is exited, it will return to the original VT it was
  started from, unless it dies unexpectedly, when the switch must be
  done manually. There still seem to be weird combinations of graphic
  cards and motherboards that have problems to restore the textfont when
  returning from XFree86 to the text mode. In these cases using the runx
  script from the svgalib distribution might help.

  The XFree86 server now queries the kernel to obtain the key binding in
  effect at startup. These bindings are either the default map in place
  when the kernel was compiled, or reloaded using the `loadkeys'
  utility. Not all keys are bound: kernel-specific, multiple keysym, and
  dead keys are not handled by the server. All others are translated to
  their X equivalents.  Note that the XFree86 server only allows for
  four modifier maps: unshifted, shifted, modeswitch unshifted and
  modeswitch shifted.  Depending on what the modeswitch key is (it is
  configurable in your XF86Config and defaults to Alt), XFree86 will
  read those tables into its keymaps.  This means if you use certain
  keys, like left-Control, for Linux modeswitch, that will not be
  mappable to X.

  There are some quirks that may need some fixing depending on your
  configuration. In the past, Linux xload used the BSD method of
  obtaining the load average from the running kernel. In the XFree86-1.3
  release, that has been replaced by reading the information from
  /proc/loadavg instead, which should be forward-compatible with future
  kernel releases. Xman has also been changed to support the GNU groff
  family instead of the BSD nroff family. A quick edit and recompile
  restores BSD conventions. The server has been modified to provide
  better console redirection support for clients, which includes
  changing the ownership of /dev/console and /dev/tty0 as well as the VT
  used to run on. Unfortunately, the kernel requires that a process be
  setuid root to perform console redirection, so xterm and xconsole must
  be setuid root.  As xconsole is not designed with running setuid root
  in mind, this opens a big security problem.

  5.  Compiling XFree86

  There are no special instructions required for compiling XFree86.
  This version was compiled with gcc-2.5.8, the 4.5.26 DLL libraries and
  the 1.4.4 shared, dynamic linker ld.so. The tools-2.16 DLL package was
  used to generate the shared libraries, and the server sources have
  been updated to use the new (/usr/bin) location of the tools. The
  server has been compiled with -m486, which optimizes it for the 486
  processor, but the binary will run on the 386 processor (there is a
  slight increase in binary size over using -m386, but no loss of
  performance).
  All extensions and clients have been ported and tested. By default,
  the servers are compiled without any extra extensions (PEX, XIE, etc),
  but libraries for those extensions are always generated. By modifying
  site.def, extra extensions can be compiled into the server.
  Alternately, the link kit can be used to craft modified servers.

  The distribution is very large, but it is possible to compile XFree86
  on a single 64mb partition, if the source tree is carefully trimmed
  (no manpages, PEX or large clients). Simply run ``make Makefiles'' to
  create the Makefiles, then stop the make and run each piece
  individually. It is not necessary to run ``make depend'' as well,
  which saves some space.  Having 100mb available makes compiling
  XFree86 a lot easier. You will need about 10mb of virtual memory to
  compile the entire server.

  If patches are applied which significantly change the libraries,
  modified jump_xxx files will be needed. Those can be generated
  according to instructions given in the DLL tools package, and will be
  made available as XFree86 patches.

  The JUMP_xxx defines used to compile the X libraries can also be used
  to compile external X shared libraries, like Xaw3d. Detailed
  instructions are provided in /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/config/lnxLib.rules,
  where the X library definitions are provided, as an example.

  Thanks to Dirk Hohndel ([e-mail]) for working out all the
  details and doing all the work in creating the first set of XFree86
  DLL libs, on which the current method (developed by Orest Zborowski
  ([e-mail])) is based.

  6.  Bug Notification

  Bug reports should be sent to [e-mail] or posted to the
  comp.windows.x.i386unix newsgroup. Questions or comments about Linux
  support or the Linux distribution should be made to [e-mail].

  $XConsortium: Linux.sgml,v 1.2 95/01/23 15:34:44 kaleb Exp $
  Generated from XFree86: xc/programs/Xserver/hw/xfree86/doc/sgml/Linux.sgml,v 3.5 1995/01/28 16:01:43 dawes Exp $