README for XFree86 2.1 on BSDI 1.0 ---------------------------------- Contents -------- 1) What and Where is XFree86? 2) Configuring X for Your Hardware 3) Running X 4) Rebuilding the XFree86 Distribution 1 - What and Where is XFree86? ------------------------------ XFree86 is a port of X11R5 that supports several versions of Intel-based Unix. It is derived from X386 1.2, which was the X server distributed with X11R5. This release consists of many new features and performance improvements as well as many bug fixes. The release is available as source patches against the MIT X11R5 code, as well as binary distributions for many architectures. The sources for XFree86 are available by anonymous ftp from ftp.x.org in /contrib/XFree86 and ftp.physics.su.oz.au in /XFree86. There is no binary release available for BSD/386. 2 - Configuring X for Your Hardware ----------------------------------- You *must* edit /usr/X386/lib/X11/Xconfig to suit your hardware. The Xconfig file tells the X server what kind of monitor, adapter and mouse you have. XFree86.man, Xconfig.man and README.Config describes the contents. Once you understand the structure of Xconfig, try to find your specific monitor and video card in the modeDB.txt and/or AccelCards files. If your Clocks and ModeDB lines are there, grab the values there and put them in your Xconfig. If modeDB.txt does not have your monitor, and the generic video modes don't work, read VideoModes.doc for instructions on how to create the video timing values given your vga card and monitor specs. The manual for your monitor and adapter should have these values. The server will print out the Clocks values for your vga card if you leave the Clocks line out of your Xconfig and run: X -probeonly >& x.out If your mouse does not work try using kermit or tip to connect to the mouse serial port and verify that it does indeed generate characters. 3 - Running X ------------- 8mb of memory is a recommended minimum for running X. The server, window manager and an xterm take about 2.5 Mb of memory themselves. On a 4Mb system that would leave very little left over for other applications like gcc that expect a few meg free. X will work with 4Mb of memory, but in practice compilation while running X can take 5 or 10 times as long due to constant paging. The easiest way for new users to start X windows is to type 'startx >& startx.log'. Note that this redirects error messages to a file that would otherwise be lost. To get out of X windows, exit from the console xterm. You can customize your X environment using .xinitrc, .xserverrc, and .twmrc files in your home directory as described in the xinit and startx man pages. Or you can run the X display manager (xdm). Root can invoke `xdm -nodaemon' on the console to start the display manager. If you would rather run xdm on bootup, add code like the following to your /etc/rc.local script. if [ -x /usr/X386/bin/xdm ]; then echo -n ' xdm'; /usr/X386/bin/xdm fi 4 - Rebuilding the XFree86 Distribution --------------------------------------- The INSTALL file describes how to create and build the XFree86-2.1 source distribution. When building for BSD/386, the default compiler is gcc-1.40. If you want to use gcc-2.4.5, define "#define HasGcc2 YES" in config/site.def. The compiler command used is "cc" for gcc-1.40 and "gcc" for gcc-2.4.5. If you use gcc-2.4.5, make sure "gcc" starts the correct compiler. The default installation path is /usr/X386. This path can be redefined with "#define ProjectRoot /xxx/yyy" in config/site.def. If you need to create the fonts, use "#define BuildFonts YES" in config/site.def. The default is to skip the font creation. If you are using X when doing "make World", keep the number of open windows to a minimum or you may get "Can't fork" errors from make. Another way to avoid this problem is to raise your process limit to 64. If you are using bash the command is "ulimit -u 64". With csh use "limit maxproc 64". The make program distributed with BSD/386 1.0 has been seen doing recompilations in the wrong order. When that happens, you can usually restart the make and it will complete OK. Gnu Make 3.70 works much better and builds without problems on BSD/386 1.0. $XFree86: mit/server/ddx/x386/README.Bsdi,v 2.4 1994/03/05 11:54:56 dawes Exp $