xfree86_howto.htm

嵌入式系统

    ld.so version 1.3 or newer. You can find the most recent version on all
    mirrors of tsx-11 in the /pub/linux/packages/GCC directory.

    You will need a main memory of at least 8 MB and a virtual memory of at
    least 16 MB (i.e. main memory + swap). It is possible to run X on a 4 MB
    machine if you take some precautions on memory usage (look at section 4,
    where a package for low memory systems is described). Note that you
    should nevertheless have 16 MB of virtual memory. (So if you have 4 megs
    of physical RAM, and 12 megs of swap, you're okay.) It is recommended
    that you have *at least* 8 megs of physical RAM, as swap is very slow.
    With only 4 megs of physical RAM, performance will suffer greatly.

    If you want to run memory-hog programs from within X (as e.g. gcc) you
    should at least have 16 MB of main memory and another 16MB of swap.

    You will need about 17 MB of disk space for the complete installation
    without LinkKit, 21 MB with LinkKit. By deleting those servers that you
    don't need and removing the LinkKit after linking your own server, you
    can save several MB of diskspace. A more concise listing on the needed 
    disk space and the contents of the distribution files can be found in the
    release notes by Simon Cooper. These can be found in the 00README file
    residing in the XFree86-2.0 directory.

    Before installing XFree86, you should make a backup of all files that
    you changed. They may not be usable, but they still hold a lot of
    information you might want to preserve. (This includes your old XConfig
    files.)

    To install the binary distribution you have to do the following as root
    in the / directory with all needed tarfiles from above.  To get all
    permission right you should use umask 022.
    
    gzip -dc tarfilename | tar xvvof -

    WARNING: This will overwrite all files from an older XFree86 version, of
    course not the Xconfig file (if you did not link it to Xconfig.sample,
    which you should NOT do). In other words, ionly if Xconfig.sample is
    linked to your Xconfig, it will be overwritten.

    After installing it, you will have to set it up correctly to match your
    system. This is described in section 3.

2.1 What do I do if I want to compile it myself?

    This is explained in the INSTALL, README and README.Linux files coming
    with XFree86. You should do that, however, only if you want to have some
    special changes to the standard distribution, as you will need a lot of
    CPU time and disk space to do this. If you only want to change the
    configuration of a server, you should use the Link Kit, as this is much
    easier to handle and will not need that much resources by far.

    For adding drivers to the SVGA server you will only need the Link Kit.
    The Link Kit comes with documentation on writing drivers for SVGA. You
    can find it in the directory /usr/X386/lib/Server/VGADriverDoc.

3. Configuring XFree86

    From version 2.0 on all documentation files for XFree86 are combined in
    one tarfile, xf86-doc-2.0.tar.gz. You have to get this file and look
    through those files to configure XFree86 correctly. The following steps
    are intended as a guide to these files.

    There is a very good introduction to configuring XFree86 in the
    README.Config coming with XFree86-2.0. Start there to configure XFree86
    and follow the instructions step by step.

    Furthermore you MUST read the manpages for Xconfig, XFree86 and the
    server you want to set up (one of XF86_SVGA, XF86_Mono, XF86_VGA16,
    XF86_S3, XF86_Mach8, XF86_Mach32 or XF86_8514). Just look in section 1,
    which server supports the chipset of your graphic card and use this.

    If you are not sure, which chipset your graphic card has (this should
    only happen, if you do not have a manual for your card), you can try to
    identify it by running SuperProbe, a graphic hardware detection program
    that comes with XFree86-2.0. You should, however, rely on the
    information of your manuals and not on that of SuperProbe (even if it is
    in most cases correct).

    Note that if SuperProbe does not detect your chipset correctly, the
    XFree86 servers will neither. Note further that SuperProbe detects far
    more hardware than XFree86 servers support.

    There is a list of accelerated graphic cards that are reported to work
    with XFree86-2.0 in the file AccelCards. Look through it to see, whether
    your card is already in the database. While other boards not listed may
    well work, The XFree86 team gives no assurances of that.

    If you were running XS3, you should take a look at README.XS3, as some 
    things did change while incorporating the XS3 server into XFree86.

    Several people reported problems with the XFree86 configuration that
    could be solved by changing the BIOS configuration of shadowing and 
    cacheable areas. The reports which settings had to be changed in order
    to get XFree86 working were partly contradicting, though. 
    Due to this fact, I only want to mention that there might be problems
    arising from BIOS setup. If you cannot get it working in spite of
    having followed all hints in the documentation, you might want to 
    fiddle with these settings.

    For configuring you will need the following information on your system:

    1. The specifications of your monitor (i.e. which vertical and horizontal
       frequences can it handle and which video bandwidth has it). This is 
       the most important thing of all as you can toast your monitor using 
       incorrect video modes and you will need these specifications to check 
       the modes.
    2. You need the name of the chipset (confer the remarks above). Note
       that there are some companies using "s3" as a synonym for "accelerated"
       chipset, so this is often not true. Please check it out in your
       manuals.
    3. Amount of video memory supplied by your card (this is usually detected
       correctly, but it is better to have the exact number and compare it 
       with the detected)
    4. Which dot-clocks are available for your card, or is your dot-clock 
       programmable. This is the hardest part for the graphic card setup.
       How to obtain these is described in the README.config.
         NOTE: there is a problem with the clock probing code for the 
            WD90C3x chipsets. Please run the XFree86-1.3 server to probe
            for the clocks and put these into your Xconfig file. Having
            done that, you can use the XFree86-2.0 server.  
         NOTE: If your RAMDAC can handle pixel clocks higher than 110MHz,
            it is probably one of the more recent high-end RAMDACs. As
            all of these (as far as it is known) use special features to 
            make this possible, these RAMDACs should not be run at higher
            clocks than 85 MHz. Support for such RAMDACs (at least for
            some of them) will be in the next release of XFree86. If you 
            drive your RAMDAC too high with the current code, you will fry
            it. So if you have such a card, do not use clocks higher than
            85MHz (simply by not putting modes using clocks higher than
            that into the Xconfig file).
    5. The protocol your mouse uses and the device it is connected to. The 
       available mouse protocols are listed in the Xconfig manpage. You 
	   have to use the keyword according to the protocol your mouse uses
	   and not the manufacturer,... The standard names of the mouse 
           devices for Linux are:
       /dev/atibm for the ATI XL busmouse (NOTE: the ATI GU busmouse
                                is in fact a logitech busmouse)
       /dev/logibm for the Logitech busmouse (NOTE: this uses the 
                                busmouse protocol, NOT the Logitech protocol)
       /dev/inportbm for the microsoft busmouse
       /dev/psaux for a ps/2 or quickport mouse
       NOTE: these are the new device names (as of MAKEDEV 1.2). Some 
       distributions and systems have different device names:
            new       old               major    minor  device number
          atibm:     bmouseatixl         10        3
          logibm:    bmouselogitec       10        0
          inportbm:  bmousems            10        2
          psaux:     bmouseps2 or ps2aux 10        1
       The other supported mice are serial mice and therefore connected
       to one of the serial ports (named /dev/ttyS? or /dev/ttyS?? for Linux).

    So now procede as in README.Config. If your Monitor is not listed in the
    modeDB.txt file, you should try one of the generic modes.  ENSURE THAT
    THE SPECS OF THE MODES ARE WITHIN THE SPECS OF YOUR MONITOR.  If you
    want to tune these modes or to compute a mode of your own, you MUST read
    VideoModes.doc and follow the instructions there.  Before trying a mode,
    compute the specs of this mode and again look if your monitor does
    support it. Here is no further description of computing VideoModes,
    as you should not do this without having read VideoModes.doc.

    WARNING: Do NOT EVER share Xconfig files with people  who do not have
       EXACTLY the same Configuration (i.e. graphic card AND monitor). By
       doing  this you could  toast your  monitor.  It isn't  so hard  to
       figure out modes (that is, for  multisync monitors) and you surely
       shouldn't ever use a mode that you  didn't check by yourself to be
       within your  monitor's specs.  Even if  you have  exactly the same
       setup  you should check      all  modes yourself   before   trying
       them. There are  many people who  run their hardware out of  specs
       which may not damage their hardware but could yours.


3.1 Configuring the keyboard for non-US-layout

    If you do not change the standard settings, the server will start up
    with an US-american keyboard layout regardless which keyboard layout was
    configured for the kernel. If you want to have a different layout, look
    at the xmodmap(1) manpage. There are example Xmodmaps available at
    sunsite.unc.edu:/pub/Linux/X11/misc for several languages and keyboard
    layouts.
    Note that you might need to define a map for several special keys (as 
    e. g. Meta, Compose, ..) in the Xconfig file to make complete use of
    these keymaps. For information on the keyboard capabilities of
    XFree86 read the XFree86kbd(1) manpage. Furthermore you should 

4.  tinyX - a XFree86 based package for low memory systems

    If you have not enough memory to run the stock XFree86 distribution, you
    might try to get this package. It is based on XFree86, so the difficult
    parts of the configuration (setting up the Xconfig file) are
    identical. To run it you need at least 4 MB RAM and another 8 MB swap
    space.  There are now several tinyX versions, one for each of the
    different servers supplied by XFree86-2.0. Please read the above
    description of the servers to get the right version of tinyX. These
    packages are named like

        tinyX-YYY-2.0.tar.gz, where YYY denotes the server name (without
                               leading XF86_)

    You can find tinyX on sunsite.unc.edu in the /pub/Linux/X11 hierarchy.
    Please look in your neighbourhood for a Mirror of it (cf. the BBS-list
    that can be found on most linux sites).  You untar it as root from
    /. After this you have to setup a Xconfig file as described in section
    3.  The documentation and READMEs for tinyX as well as most of the
    XFree86-2.0 documentation files can be found in /readmes. Read the
    XFree86 documentation files _before_ setting up a Xconfig file as they
    are required for this.

    The tinyX documentation includes a lot of useful information on memory
    saving techniques. You should follow at least some of these suggestions,
    as running X while swapping constantly is no fun at all :-(.  If you are
    running out of memory your system will lock up completely (in many cases
    the only way out is to turn off power or to make a hard reset - both is
    very dangerous for your filesystem). So read these files before starting
    X so that this does not happen.

    As tinyX does not include all documentation available with XFree86-2.0, 
    you might notice that you are pointed to a file that is not included.
    In this case you must get the rest of the documentation files (and
    perhaps the manpages, too) from any XFree86-2.0 site (cf. 2.). If you 
    have enough disk space for that, this is highly recommended anyway.
	
    Note that XFree86 specific manpages (as the Server manpages,...)
    are not in the *-man-* but in the *-doc* files.


5.  X - related packages

    There are a lot of packages that are related to X. I mention two here,
    because they have a great influence on the look-and-feel of X.

    - The xview3L5.1.tar.gz package 

      This package is a port of SUN(TM)'s xview3.2 package by Kenneth
      Osterberg to Linux. It includes the xview toolkit, a set of extensions
      to X. It will give you the look-and-feel of the Open Look(TM)
      extension to X (many will know that from open windows from SUN(TM)).

      To install it, untar the tarfile as root in some directory (e.g.
      /usr/src), read the documentation that comes with it (most important
      the README and run the INSTALL script. Note that you need about 25MB
      free disk space to install it completely (with examples). This is
      partly due to the fact, that for some time all files are twice on the
      disk. After running the INSTALL script and removing the xview3L5.1
      directory you will need about 11 MB (including all examples). If you
      do not want to install the examples , you will need about 9 MB. If you
      do not want to compile or program any program that uses xview, you can
      spare another 2.5 MB.

      For running Xview you will need at least 8 MB of RAM, better 16 MB. To
      run xview with XFree86-2.0 you should get the ld.so package version
      1.3 or newer.

    - There is a port of Motif(TM) to Linux.
     
      This is commercial software, so you will have to pay for it. You can
      find an advertisement from Metrolink (the company that provided the
      port to Linux) on tsx-11:/pub/linux/advertisements.

    These packages provide different window managers than the standard twm
    that comes with XFree86. There are several further window managers that
    you can find on sunsite:/pub/Linux/X11/Window-managers.  All these use
    different setups, so you have to read the documentation on the window
    managers to set them up correctly.
    
    There are a lot of programs available for X. Look through the