Information for Linux Users <author> Orest Zborowski, Dirk Hohndel <date> 20 October, 1996 <toc> <sect> Linux versions on which XFree86 has been tested XFree86 has been tested with Linux version 2.0.19. It should work with any version since 1.0 without change. The binaries and libraries are based on the 5.2.18 Elf C libraries, and the 1.7.14 dynamic linker <tt>ld.so</tt>. <sect> 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 <tt>/usr/X386/lib</tt> elsewhere, but <tt>/etc/ld.so.conf</tt> must be updated. All X11R5 applications should work with the X11R6 servers without problems. X11R6.1 is yet another update to X11R6. While the minor number for some libraries has been increased to '1' it is believed to be fully compatible with X11R6 based applications. 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 <tt>/lib/libX{11,t,aw}.so.3</tt> to <tt>/usr/X386/lib/libX{11,t,aw}.so.3</tt>. Linking with <tt>ld.so</tt> against the XView3L5 distribution will give problems with pre-1.3 versions of <tt>ld.so</tt>, since the XView libraries contain the absolute path to the shared images, which is discouraged with <tt>ld.so</tt>. A temporary fix is including <tt>/</tt> in <tt>/etc/ld.so.config</tt>, better recompile XView with relative library names or get a newer <tt>ld.so</tt>. <sect> Installing XFree86 Starting with version 3.0, XFree86 is installed in <tt>/usr/X11R6</tt>. 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. <sect> 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 <tt>/usr/X11R6/lib</tt> in <tt>/etc/ld.so.conf</tt> (where it should already be by default) or in your <tt>LD_LIBRARY_PATH</tt> environment variable. Also, the configuration file <tt>/etc/XF86Config</tt> or <tt>/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/XF86Config</tt> must be properly filled out based on the host setup using <tt>XF86Config.eg</tt> as a starting point and <tt>README.Config</tt> as guideline. You may damage your hardware if you use a wrong <tt>XF86Config</tt> file, so read the docs, especially the man pages and the other <tt>README</tt> files in <tt>/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/doc</tt>. Starting with XFree86-3.1.2F a new interactive setup utility <tt>XF86Setup</tt> has been included in the distribution. We recommend using this tool to setup the <tt>XF86Config</tt> file. Please read the corresponding documentation. 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 <tt>NR_CONSOLES</tt> in <tt>include/linux/tty.h</tt> 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 `<tt>loadkeys</tt>' command found in the <tt>kbd-0.81.tar.gz</tt> 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 <tt>runx</tt> script from the <bf>svgalib</bf> 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 `<tt>loadkeys</tt>' 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 <tt>XF86Config</tt> 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 <tt>/proc/loadavg</tt> 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 <tt>/dev/console</tt> and <tt>/dev/tty0</tt> as well as the VT used to run on. Unfortunately, the kernel requires that a process be setuid root to perform console redirection, so <tt>xterm</tt> and <tt>xconsole</tt> must be setuid root. As <tt>xconsole</tt> is not designed with running setuid root in mind, this opens a big security problem. <sect> Installing Xdm, the display manager Since xdm is dynamically linked, there's no issue on export restriction outside US for this binary distribution of xdm: it does not contain the DES encryption code. So it's now included in the bin package. However the file <tt>xc/lib/Xdmcp/WrapHelp.c</tt> is not included in the XFree86-3.2 source, so support for XDM-AUTHORIZATION-1 is not included here. You'll have to get WrapHelp.c and rebuild xdm after having set <tt/HasXdmAuth/ in <tt/xf86site.def/. The file is available within the US; for details see <htmlurl name="ftp.x.org:/pub/R6/xdm-auth/README" url="ftp://ftp.x.org/pub/R6/xdm-auth/README">. To start the display manager, log in as root on the console and type: ``<tt/xdm -nodaemon/''. You can start xdm automatically on bootup by disabling the console getty and modifying <tt>/etc/inittab</tt>. Details about this setup depend on the Linux distribution that you use, so check the documentation provided there. The xdm binary provided should run with both shadow- and non-shadow password systems. <sect>xterm The XFree86-3.2 binary release contains an xterm binary that has been linked statically against libtermcap. This was done to make sure that it will correctly work with all distributions, regardless whether they rely on libtermcap or libncurses. Contrary to the xterm binaries in some beta version following XFree86-3.1.2, this binary does not rely on a recent libncurses being installed on your system. <sect>Input devices XFree86 now support the dynamic loading of drivers for external input devices using the <tt/XInput/ extension. Currently supported devices are: <itemize> <item> Joystick (<tt/xf86Jstk.so/) <item> Wacom tablets (Wacom IV protocol only, <tt/xf86Wacom.so/) <item> SummaSketch tablets (<tt/xf86Summa.so/) <item> Elographics touchscreen (<tt/xf86Elo.so/) </itemize> To use a specific device, add the line <tscreen> <tt/load/ <tt/"/<em/module/<tt/"/ </tscreen> in the <bf/Module/ section of <tt/XF86Config/, where <em/module/ is the name of the <tt/.so/ file corresponding to your device. You also need to set up a <bf/XInput/ section in <tt/XF86Config/. Refer to the XF86Config(5) man page for detailed configuration instructions. You can then change the device used to drive the X pointer with the <em/xsetpointer(1)/ command. For joystick support, you'll need to install the joystick device driver in the kernel. <sect1>Configuring PEX and XIE extensions The PEX and XIE extensions are now supported as external modules. If you want to have access to these extensions, add the following lines to the <bf/Module/ section of <tt/XF86Config/: <tscreen><verb> load "pex5.so" load "xie.so" </verb></tscreen> <sect> Compiling XFree86 Only the sources for full releases of XFree86 are freely available. The last full release of XFree86 is 3.2. There are no special instructions required for compiling XFree86. This version was compiled with gcc-2.7.2, the 5.2.18 Elf libraries and the 1.7.14 shared, dynamic linker ld.so. The server has been compiled with <tt>-m486</tt>, 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 <tt>-m386</tt>, 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. They can be loaded at runtime, see the XFree86 man page for details. By modifying <tt>site.def</tt>, 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 ``<tt>make Makefiles</tt>'' to create the Makefiles, then stop the make and run each piece individually. It is not necessary to run ``<tt>make depend</tt>'' 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 an aout version of XFree86 is to be built and 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 <tt>/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/config/lnxLib.rules</tt>, where the X library definitions are provided, as an example. Thanks to Dirk Hohndel (<it>hohndel@@aib.com</it>) 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 (<it>orestz@@eskimo.com</it>)) is based. <sect> Bug Notification Bug reports should be sent to <it>XFree86@@XFree86.org</it> or posted to the <it>comp.windows.x.i386unix</it> newsgroup. <verb> $XFree86: xc/programs/Xserver/hw/xfree86/doc/sgml/Linux.sgml,v 3.9 1996/10/20 13:33:12 dawes Exp $ $XConsortium: Linux.sgml /main/3 1995/11/12 19:59:39 kaleb $ </verb> </article> @ 1.1 log @Initial revision @ text @@ 1.1.1.1 log @XFree86 3.2 sources @ text @@ 1.1.1.2 log @XFree86 3.3 sources. @ text @d1 1 a1 1 <!DOCTYPE linuxdoc PUBLIC "-//XFree86//DTD linuxdoc//EN"> d5 3 a7 3 <title>Information for Linux Users <author>Orest Zborowski, Dirk Hohndel <date>May 13, 1997 d10 2 a11 2 <sect>Linux versions on which XFree86 has been tested XFree86 has been tested with Linux version 2.0.30. It should work d13 2 a14 3 based on the 5.4.7 Elf C libraries, and the 1.7.14 dynamic linker <tt>ld.so</tt>. You will at least need the 5.2.x Elf C libraries to successfully use the servers. d16 1 a16 1 <sect>Backwards Compatibility a27 4 X11R6.3 is yet another update to X11R6.1. While the minor number for some libraries has been increased to '3' it is believed to be fully compatible with X11R6 based applications. d32 14 a46 2 <sect>Installing XFree86 Starting with version 3.0, XFree86 is installed in <tt>/usr/X11R6</tt>. d52 1 a52 1 <sect>Running XFree86 d64 3 a66 4 based on the host setup. Ideally this is done using <tt>XF86Setup</tt> or (if for some reason this doesn't work) using <tt>xf86config</tt>. If you really insist in hand-creating your config file use <tt>XF86Config.eg</tt> as a starting point and <tt>README.Config</tt> as d72 5 d84 1 a84 3 you don't have a free VT XFree86 cannot run. Normally you can simply disable one of the <tt>getty</tt> programs in <tt>/etc/inittab</tt>, but if this is not an option, you can increase the number of d123 17 a139 1 <sect>Installing Xdm, the display manager d148 1 a148 1 XFree86-3.3 source, so support for d169 1 a169 1 The XFree86-3.3 binary release contains an xterm binary that has been linked d182 4 a185 4 <item>Joystick (<tt/xf86Jstk.so/) <item>Wacom tablets (Wacom IV protocol only, <tt/xf86Wacom.so/) <item>SummaSketch tablets (<tt/xf86Summa.so/) <item>Elographics touchscreen (<tt/xf86Elo.so/) d204 1 a204 1 <sect1>Configuring PEX, XIE and GLX extensions d206 1 a206 1 The PEX, XIE and GLX extensions are now supported as external modules. a212 2 For GLX you need to get the appropriate GLX modules, first. They are, at this time, not part of the XFree86 distribution. d215 3 d219 1 a219 1 This version was compiled with gcc-2.7.2.1, the 5.4.7 Elf libraries and the d240 1 a240 1 150mb available makes compiling XFree86 a lot easier. You will need about d254 6 a259 1 <sect>Bug Notification d264 1 a264 1 $XFree86: xc/programs/Xserver/hw/xfree86/doc/sgml/Linux.sgml,v 3.13.2.3 1997/05/23 12:19:40 dawes Exp $ d270 1 a270 1 $XConsortium: Linux.sgml /main/6 1996/10/28 04:47:37 kaleb $ @ 1.1.1.3 log @XFree86 3.3.2 sources @ text @d7 1 a7 1 <date>February 26, 1997 d11 5 a15 8 XFree86 has been tested with Linux version 2.0.32 and several 2.1xx kernels. It is known not to compile with kernel sources newer then somewhere around 2.1.70, due to incompatibilities in the joystick driver. Except for the joystick driver, it works just fine with all 2.1.x kernels tested (including 2.1.88). It should work with any version since 1.0 without change. The binaries and libraries are based on the 5.3.12 Elf C libraries, and the 1.7.14 dynamic linker <tt>ld.so</tt>. You will at least need the 5.2.x Elf C libraries to successfully use the servers. d144 1 a144 1 The XFree86-3.3.2 binary release contains an xterm binary that has been linked d193 1 a193 1 This version was compiled with gcc-2.7.2.1, the 5.3.12 Elf libraries and the d207 10 d233 1 a233 1 $XFree86: xc/programs/Xserver/hw/xfree86/doc/sgml/Linux.sgml,v 3.13.2.4 1998/02/26 20:11:26 hohndel Exp $ @ 1.1.1.4 log @XFree86 3.3.3 sources @ text @d7 1 a7 1 <date>November 7, 1998 d11 1 a11 1 XFree86 has been tested with Linux version 2.0.32 and several 2.1.x kernels. d43 4 a46 2 The installation details are provided in the <htmlurl name="RELNOTES" url="RELNOTES.html">. d147 1 a147 1 The XFree86-3.3.3 binary release contains an xterm binary that has been linked a163 3 <item>AceCad ADVANCEDigitizer (<tt/xf86AceCad.so/) <item>MicroTouch TouchPen (<tt/xf86MuTouch.so/) <item>SGI dial box (<tt/xf86Dial.so/) d226 1 a226 1 $XFree86: xc/programs/Xserver/hw/xfree86/doc/sgml/Linux.sgml,v 3.13.2.6 1998/11/08 09:06:39 dawes Exp $ @ 1.1.1.5 log @XFree86 3.3.3.1 sources @ text @d7 1 a7 1 <date>December 23, 1998 d11 5 a15 3 XFree86 has been tested with Linux version 2.0.36 and several 2.1.x kernels. It works just fine with all 2.1.x kernels tested (including 2.1.131). It should work with any version since 1.0 without change. The d143 83 d227 1 a227 1 $XFree86: xc/programs/Xserver/hw/xfree86/doc/sgml/Linux.sgml,v 3.13.2.7 1998/12/23 13:36:26 hohndel Exp $ @ 1.1.1.6 log @XFree86 3.3.4 sources @ text @d7 1 a7 1 <date>June 25, 1999 d11 6 a16 4 XFree86 has been tested with Linux version 2.0.36, 2.2.7 and several 2.3.x kernels. It should work with any version since 1.0 without change. Binaries both against libc5 and libc6 are available. d46 1 a46 1 having 16mb of RAM is probably the minimum comfortable configuration. A 387 d142 1 a142 1 $XFree86: xc/programs/Xserver/hw/xfree86/doc/sgml/Linux.sgml,v 3.13.2.8 1999/06/25 08:57:14 hohndel Exp $ @