On Mon May 04 1998, "Dave Mielke" wrote:
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> >Meanwhile, make /etc/X11/X a symlink to the XFree86 driver that you need to
> >run with your card (if any), and forget about MetroX for the moment (bummer).
>
> Please excuse my rather severe case of ignorance regarding X Server
> administration. Where would I find those drivers within my local file
> system, and how would I know which one to point the link to?
Usually, your X driver is /usr/X11/bin/X which is, in turn, a symbolic link to
the "real" driver that is specific for your card.
It seems that you need very badly to read the man pages for `X' and
`XFree86' (and the other man pages that these refer to). There are also
one or two HOWTO documents about using and configuring X (including a
"tips" howto from redhat). All are very much worth reading.
On my (non-RH) system at home (which I want to make RH), I have
/usr/X11/bin/X as a symbolic link to /etc/X11/X - which is similar to how
it is "usually" done.
RedHat 5.0 has done it differently (at least for XFree86-3.3.2, and
probably also for 3.3.1 - I upgraded to 3.3.2 very quickly:)...
% ls -l /usr/X11R6/bin/X
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 8 Apr 17 11:08 /usr/X11R6/bin/X -> Xwrapper
/usr/X11/bin/X is a symbolic link to a "wrapper" program (for security
reasons) which looks for /etc/X11/X (as root do a "strings" on it). In
turn, this file (/etc/X11/X) is a symlink to the real X driver for your
card...
% ls -l /etc/X11/X
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 28 Mar 25 12:04 /etc/X11/X -> ../../usr/X11R6/bin/XF86_S3V
I have an S3 ViRGE card, and this is the driver I need to use for it.
Try doing `/etc/X11/X -probeonly' to see what happens.
This is the file that will otherwise be pointing to your MetroX driver.
If you make it point to an XFree86 driver, then you are effectively
disabling it.
Easy, no?
> Does RedHat do anything special with the packages, or is it safe for me
> to get the latest XFree86 server from XFree86.org and "rpm -u" it over
> top of what I already have?
You can get the lastest XFree86 3.3.2 rpm's from
ftp.redhat.com/pub/contrib/hurricane/i386/
Grab the "base" files, the fonts, and then the specific driver files that
you'll need (at least grab the VGA-16 and SVGA drivers to get generic
GUI support).
Some other messages mentioned that XF-3.3.2 does support your AGP card, so
in your case grab that one.
BTW, use `rpm -U <package>.i386.rpm' (capital `U', not small `u' :)
It worked perfectly for me installing 3.3.2 over the top of 3.3.1. (I do
have one lingering problem, but I'll leave that for another message).
> Will installing an updated XFree86 do anything to destroy the MetroX
> setup, and vice versa?
No. Well no, it shouldn't. XFree86 and MetroX are independent packages,
and the beauty of how the rpm utility works is that it knows about package
and library dependencies, and dependencies between various packages... if
any inconsistencies are found when you try to install or remove anything,
then you'll get complaints (unless you --force it).
However, I did an `rpm -e metroess' on my system and it ripped out a whole
lot of stuff in /usr/X11/lib/X11/xkb/ that I otherwise needed! (But that
was my mistake, not that of rpm).
> Thanks.
Hope this helps.
Cheers
Tony .
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Uni of Southern Queensland v Toowoomba Australia
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