From owner-freebsd-questions Tue Mar 14 12:59:06 1995 Return-Path: questions-owner Received: (from majordom@localhost) by freefall.cdrom.com (8.6.10/8.6.6) id MAA00693 for questions-outgoing; Tue, 14 Mar 1995 12:59:06 -0800 Received: from netcom15.netcom.com (root@netcom15.netcom.com [192.100.81.128]) by freefall.cdrom.com (8.6.10/8.6.6) with ESMTP id MAA00683 for ; Tue, 14 Mar 1995 12:59:04 -0800 Received: by netcom15.netcom.com (8.6.10/Netcom) id JAA09183; Tue, 14 Mar 1995 09:16:09 -0800 Date: Tue, 14 Mar 1995 09:16:09 -0800 From: pascal@netcom.com (Richard A Childers) Message-Id: <199503141716.JAA09183@netcom15.netcom.com> To: justin.kuntz@ftscorp.com, questions@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: trouble ( with X install ) Sender: questions-owner@FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk justin.kuntz@ftscorp.com inquires : "... After installing the required binaries, I then try installing the X Windows support, but the system stops at the screen "loading X Win", which occurs AFTER the checksums have been validated." "I would really like to get this to work. Do you have any ideas?" -=8=- ( Caveat : my experience is with diskettes downloaded over the Net, not with a CDROM-driven installation. Don't think there's much difference. Both are RELEASE 2.0. ) In general, I've found the Menu-Driven Intallation only works flawlessly with a few basic packages. Binaries ... sources ... maybe manpages. Have not been successful getting it to autoload X. Which is OK. Four virtual terminals ( now 8 :-) and BSD is enough for me, for the moment. Submit that Release 2.0's core consists purely of {bin,src,kern}dist and that everything else should be regarded as a layered application above and beyond the basic core of BSD ... and treated as distinct from FreeBSD. -=8=- That having been said, I'm as keenly interested in getting X to run as anyone else. (-: And I'm also experiencing segmentation faults. There's a nice FAQ on installing and running X that I haven't finished but which I recommend to everyone. To load X manually, I did ( approximately ) the following : (1) copy compressed installation file set(s) into /usr/tmp ( /usr had been sized accordingly beforehand to allow for unpacking and rebuilding ... 270 MB ) (2) read documents and decide which file set(s) aren't needed - for instance, won't be using Kanji or Arabic, can eliminate a number of video card drivers that are not present (3) run extract.sh - this creates an installation tree right in /usr/tmp, inside a directory called X11R6, if memory serves me correctly. ( Oh, yeah, set umask first - see FAQ ) (4) tar installation into previously created /usr/X11R6 filesystem, suggested size 50 MB : ( cd /usr/tmp/X11R6 ; tar cf - . ) | ( cd /usr/X11R6 ; tar xvf - ) ( This may be avoidable by setting the DESTDIR variable, so that the installation is placed directly into /usr/X11R6. ) (5) run ranlib on X lib directory (6) Run xf86config ( probably needs to be done a couple of times until everything's just right, unless you have *all* of the specs on your video display, video controller, and mouse ) (7) return to mortal status ( don't want to run X as "root", you will litter /root with .files, erase files accidentally, et caetera ) and start X with the "startx" command ( may need to reset $path and do a rehash [ assuming csh here ] ) I find it useful to collect startx output into a file, so I've done the following in my .cshrc : alias startx '/usr/X11R6/bin/startx >& ./startx_`date +%y%m%d%H%M`' ( or something like that ) ... so that I'm collecting the data from my efforts and not *completely* wasting my time. (-; Hope that's of some help !! -=8=- Any X whizs out there ? I'm running 32 MB of swap and 8 MB of RAM, swap is mounted and only about 10% is being utilized. X starts, but freezes when I use the mouse to invoke the root window menu ( or just about any other window operation outside of the text area of the Login xterm ). -- richard Pontius Pilate was politically correct. So was Benedict Arnold. So was Vidkun Quisling ... and so was Adolph Hitler. |-: richard childers san francisco, california pascal@netcom.com