RE: problems with XFree
On Thu, 2002-07-25 at 11:20, Harold Hunt wrote: Jehan, Excellent summarization of the thread regarding how we can add /usr/X11R6/bin to the path. Looks like we had Dave Cook and Robert Collins discussing the best way to do things but then the thread died. I don't really think that I know how to implement the best solution here, so I will just have to leave this up to others. I've been trying for *ages* to get /etc/profile to be an external file. All' it needs is *someone* willing to be a package maintainer for it. Hardly an onerous role, yet no one seems willing to do it. As soon as someone emails me with their willingness, I can provide the relevant tarall immediately, and that person then can just add /usr/X11R6/bin to the path in /etc/profile. Rob
Re: problems with XFree
Jehan, As a rule of thumb, packages should *never* modify the /etc/profile script (even if you do back it up). This is a big no-no, as most *nix people would tell you. If you insist on getting into a discussion on why this is, then so be it. Instead, create 2 scripts (a csh and a sh) and drop them into the /etc/profile.d/ directory. This way we play it safe and every one is happy. Also, your scripts should check to see if the path has already been set, if it has, then don't set it again. Remeber, the more entries in the path, the slower Cygwin will operate. Cheers, Nicholas --- Jehan [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Harold Hunt wrote: Jehan, Excellent summarization of the thread regarding how we can add /usr/X11R6/bin to the path. Looks like we had Dave Cook and Robert Collins discussing the best way to do things but then the thread died. I don't really think that I know how to implement the best solution here, so I will just have to leave this up to others. Here is an attempt to add the path into /etc/profile using a post-install script. I first try to see if /etc/profile already sets the X path for people who have customized it. So I grep for something of the form PATH=/usr/X11R6/bin If I find such a line then I do nothing. If the line isn't here, I create a new /etc/profile with the lines: if ! echo $PATH | /bin/grep -q /usr/X11R6/bin ; then PATH=$PATH:/usr/X11R6/bin fi at the top of the file, as suggested in the old thread. Just to be safe, the old profile is renamed /etc/profile.old. Jehan #!/bin/bash TMP_PROFILE=/etc/profile.new if ! /bin/grep -q PATH=.*/usr/X11R6/bin /etc/profile; then cat $TMP_PROFILE EOF if ! echo \$PATH | /bin/grep -q /usr/X11R6/bin ; then PATH=\$PATH:/usr/X11R6/bin fi EOF cat /etc/profile $TMP_PROFILE /bin/mv /etc/profile /etc/profile.old /bin/mv $TMP_PROFILE /etc/profile fi __ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Health - Feel better, live better http://health.yahoo.com
Re: problems with XFree
Nicholas Wourms wrote: As a rule of thumb, packages should *never* modify the /etc/profile script (even if you do back it up). This is a big no-no, as most *nix people would tell you. If you insist on getting into a discussion on why this is, then so be it. Instead, create 2 scripts (a csh and a sh) and drop them into the /etc/profile.d/ directory. I don't like modifying /etc/profile either because I don't think there any clean way to do it. But if you read the thread I summarized, someone said that Unixes set X path in /etc/profile. And this make sense to me: there are no guarantees on the order of execution of the scripts in /etc/profile.d. What if one of them looks for X and doesn't find it because the path has not yet been set? As you said in our heated thread last time, X is quite an important package and we will have more and more package depending on it. If the 2 scripts in profile.d are preferred, then I already sent them less than two weeks ago. This way we play it safe and every one is happy. Also, your scripts should check to see if the path has already been set, if it has, then don't set it again. Remeber, the more entries in the path, the slower Cygwin will operate. If you read the scripts carefully, you'll see that I do check if the path exists. I check in the install script if /etc/profile has a line of the form ...PATH=.../usr/X11R6/bin Sure it doesn't handle every single cases (what if someone uses a temporary variable). But it should handle 99.99% of the cases. If such a line is already in /etc/profile, I don't change it. I also check the path in /etc/profile script itself using the echo/grep line. Jehan
Re: problems with XFree
Let me see if I understand what is going on here: We are debeating whether to: 1) Modify /etc/profile, which is not installed via a package, but is created directly by setup.exe. 2) Add two scripts, one for bash-style shells and one for c-shell-style shells to /etc/profile.d/. These scripts are processed by /etc/profile. We would add this new scripts to an XFree86 package, probably XFree86-bin, and we would install these scripts via a post-install script if they were not already present (so we do not overwrite modifications). Of all the arguments for/against the two methods, so far only one seems to be a sticking point that essentially decides how we will do this: There is no guarantee that the sub-script in /etc/profile.d/ that adds /usr/X11R6/bin to the path will be executed before some other shell script, that may be added at a later date to /etc/profile.d/, that requires that the path to the X11R6 binaries already be set. In order to allow other scripts in /etc/profile.d/ to assume that the path to the X11R6 binaries is known, we must set the path to the binaries in /etc/profile before the /etc/profile.d/ scripts are processed. I therefore throw my vote 100% behind modifying the /etc/profile script to add /usr/X11R6/bin to the path, if that directory exists. Robert Collins had said something about pulling the /etc/profile script out of setup.exe and having it installed as a stand-alone package. Was this the task that two people had volunteered for? If so, shall we wait until this package is made before we propose any changes to /etc/profile, or should we go ahead and submit a patch for the /etc/profile that is distributed with setup.exe now? Hopefully I haven't confused anything here. I have not commented until now because I had no idea what was going on with all of this profile[.d] stuff, but I think I have a pretty good grasp of it now. Harold Jehan wrote: Nicholas Wourms wrote: As a rule of thumb, packages should *never* modify the /etc/profile script (even if you do back it up). This is a big no-no, as most *nix people would tell you. If you insist on getting into a discussion on why this is, then so be it. Instead, create 2 scripts (a csh and a sh) and drop them into the /etc/profile.d/ directory. I don't like modifying /etc/profile either because I don't think there any clean way to do it. But if you read the thread I summarized, someone said that Unixes set X path in /etc/profile. And this make sense to me: there are no guarantees on the order of execution of the scripts in /etc/profile.d. What if one of them looks for X and doesn't find it because the path has not yet been set? As you said in our heated thread last time, X is quite an important package and we will have more and more package depending on it. If the 2 scripts in profile.d are preferred, then I already sent them less than two weeks ago. This way we play it safe and every one is happy. Also, your scripts should check to see if the path has already been set, if it has, then don't set it again. Remeber, the more entries in the path, the slower Cygwin will operate. If you read the scripts carefully, you'll see that I do check if the path exists. I check in the install script if /etc/profile has a line of the form ...PATH=.../usr/X11R6/bin Sure it doesn't handle every single cases (what if someone uses a temporary variable). But it should handle 99.99% of the cases. If such a line is already in /etc/profile, I don't change it. I also check the path in /etc/profile script itself using the echo/grep line. Jehan
Re: problems with xfree
Christopher Faylor wrote: On Thu, Jul 25, 2002 at 04:47:39PM -0400, Harold L Hunt II wrote: Let me see if I understand what is going on here: We are debeating whether to: 1) Modify /etc/profile, which is not installed via a package, but is created directly by setup.exe. 2) Add two scripts, one for bash-style shells and one for c-shell-style shells to /etc/profile.d/. These scripts are processed by /etc/profile. We would add this new scripts to an XFree86 package, probably XFree86-bin, and we would install these scripts via a post-install script if they were not already present (so we do not overwrite modifications). Of all the arguments for/against the two methods, so far only one seems to be a sticking point that essentially decides how we will do this: There is no guarantee that the sub-script in /etc/profile.d/ that adds /usr/X11R6/bin to the path will be executed before some other shell script, that may be added at a later date to /etc/profile.d/, that requires that the path to the X11R6 binaries already be set. In order to allow other scripts in /etc/profile.d/ to assume that the path to the X11R6 binaries is known, we must set the path to the binaries in /etc/profile before the /etc/profile.d/ scripts are processed. I don't know what this other script in /etc/profile.d might be, but if it is a problem for the other script, it could easily include /etc/profile.d/add_x11_path (or whatever) to add the script to ensure that the path was properly set. So, I think that adding an appropriate file to /etc/profile.d makes more sense. Then people who don't have /usr/bin/X11R6 don't have a spurious check for the directory in their /etc/profile. cgf That sounds even more reasonable. No one has suggested that yet. One question though... are there any known packages that put a script in /etc/profile.d/ that expect the path to the X11R6 binaries to already be set, but that do not include some X11R6 path-setting script? We would have to modify any such scripts, if we ever encounter them, to include our X11R6 path-setting script. That doesn't seem like a horrible trade-off. Okay, go with the new scripts in /etc/profile.d/. Jehan - you sent in these scripts before, right? Could you send them again? Thanks. Harold
RE: problems with XFree
Harold, thanks for the suggestions. I was hoping that oue of them would solve the problem. I checked and found only one cygwin1.dll on the system. It's dated 5 July. I update frequently using setup.exe. I agree with you assessment of Windows. However, my problem isn't the BSOD but XFree86 seg fault. Windows keeps on working and the (apparent) memory leak resolves itself after CFree86 croaks. Let me know if there is anything else I can do on my end to identify the problem. Thanks, Tom Tom, Have you sent in the contents of /tmp/XWin.log from a time when this problem happens? Harold
RE: problems with XFree
Jehan, Excellent summarization of the thread regarding how we can add /usr/X11R6/bin to the path. Looks like we had Dave Cook and Robert Collins discussing the best way to do things but then the thread died. I don't really think that I know how to implement the best solution here, so I will just have to leave this up to others. Harold -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Jehan Sent: Tuesday, July 23, 2002 10:17 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: problems with XFree Harold L Hunt II wrote: Sylvain Petreolle wrote: Why not install a file in /etc/profile.d ? Sylvain, I am not sure why we didn't use /etc/profile.d. I remember discussing it, but when I searched the mailing list archives using the search function at the top of the archive page, all I got was a bunch of spam messages that I don't recall ever seeing on the mailing list (at least not on the dates mentioned). I will have to do a google search for profile.d on our site, but I haven't got time now. If you could do the search and summarize where the thread left off, that would be great. I seem to remember that a profile.d would work for some cases, but it wouldn't work for all cases... but I cannot give a specific example (might be the archives as well). There was some talk about that on this thread: http://sources.redhat.com/ml/cygwin-xfree/2001-q2/threads.html#01549 There they say that the path to X should be set before any call to /etc/profile.d/* to be more Unix like (i.e. near the top of /etc/profile). It was suggested to add if ! echo $PATH | /bin/grep -q /usr/X11R6/bin ; then PATH=$PATH:/usr/X11R6/bin fi at the top of /etc/profile. The comment was: Now the stock Cygwin /etc/profile (unlike the Linux one) actually sets a default PATH on the first line via PATH=/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:$PATH Fortunately this puts the important system paths ahead of anything already defined, so it's OK to add /usr/X11R6/bin at the top. Post http://sources.redhat.com/ml/cygwin-xfree/2001-q2/msg01574.html; is supposed to give a patch but I don't see it. Anyway, it was for the cygwin install (with the assumption that Cygwin/XFree would soon use Cygwin's setup). It's probably better to have a post-install script to do it Jehan
Re: problems with XFree
Harold Hunt wrote: Harold, thanks for the suggestions. I was hoping that oue of them would solve the problem. I checked and found only one cygwin1.dll on the system. It's dated 5 July. I update frequently using setup.exe. I agree with you assessment of Windows. However, my problem isn't the BSOD but XFree86 seg fault. Windows keeps on working and the (apparent) memory leak resolves itself after CFree86 croaks. Let me know if there is anything else I can do on my end to identify the problem. Thanks, Tom Tom, Have you sent in the contents of /tmp/XWin.log from a time when this problem happens? Harold Harold Here it is: ddxProcessArgument () - Initializing default screens winInitializeDefaultScreens - w 1024 h 768 winInitializeDefaultScreens - Returning _XSERVTransmkdir: Owner of /tmp/.X11-unix should be set to root winDetectSupportedEngines () - Windows 95/98/Me winDetectSupportedEngines () - DirectDraw installed winDetectSupportedEngines () - DirectDraw4 installed winDetectSupportedEngines () - Returning, supported engines 0017 winSetEngine () - Using Shadow DirectDraw NonLocking winAdjustVideoModeShadowDDNL () - Using Windows display depth of 16 bits per pixel winAllocateFBShadowDDNL () - Not changing video mode winAllocateFBShadowDDNL () - lPitch: 2048 winInitVisualsShadowDDNL () - Masks 7c00 03e0 001f BPRGB 5 d 16 winCreateDefColormap () - Deferring to fbCreateDefColormap () winScreenInit () - returning winCloseScreenShadowDDNL () - Freeing screen resources winDetectSupportedEngines () - Windows 95/98/Me winDetectSupportedEngines () - DirectDraw installed winDetectSupportedEngines () - DirectDraw4 installed winDetectSupportedEngines () - Returning, supported engines 0017 winSetEngine () - Using Shadow DirectDraw NonLocking winAllocateFBShadowDDNL () - Not changing video mode winAllocateFBShadowDDNL () - lPitch: 2048 winInitVisualsShadowDDNL () - Masks 7c00 03e0 001f BPRGB 5 d 16 winCreateDefColormap () - Deferring to fbCreateDefColormap () winScreenInit () - returning Looks unremarkable to me, but I hope it tells you something useful. Regards, Tom
RE: problems with XFree
3) within the first few hours of usage, I ran a find / -name abc -print from the command-line, and my trusty Windows 2000 box restarted. If that crashed your windows box then that sounds like a bug in either Windows 2000 or base cygwin - rather than the Xfree86 port. but i'm still amazed at how easily my robust kernel, based on NT Technology, came down. You amazed that it stayed up long enough for you to run the cygwin installer? ;) One thing to look at is memory usage. Cygwin is a bit hard on memory usage. Could it be that your exhausting memory and that's killing everything? 5) it'd be nice if setup.exe showed the size (in bytes or megabytes, etc.) of each package (it's in setup.ini). on my 56 Kb/s modem, downloading a large, unnecessary file takes a painfully long time, but a small unnecessary file is not so bad. setup.exe is a base cygwin thing as well. You'll need to talk to [EMAIL PROTECTED] for that. 11) also, what's all that /b stuff about in startxwin.bat? gotos, etc. but there is no /b ! (there is no spoon either ;-) start /b app name is supposed to start the app in the background. This is an NT only thing. However, I believe that we no longer need to use this as XWin does this anyway. There used to be a bug where without this flag server logging was broken but that got fixed a couple of months ago. Stuart
RE: problems with XFree
Tom, I bet that you either have two copies of cygwin1.dll on your system, or that you have a really old version of cygwin1.dll. For more information see: http://xfree86.cygwin.com/docs/faq/cygwin-xfree-faq.html#q-status-access-vio lation I run XDMCP sessions for several hours with no slowdowns or lockups. I also log off and back on to XDMCP sessions all the time. A couple of days ago I did identify and fix a memory leak that happens when the X server resets, which happens when you logoff an XDMCP session. I think that Windows 2000 and Windows XP do not show a bluescreen anymore by default. You can change that option in the Control Panel. You mention that this also happens on Windows 95/98/Me, which seems to be about the level of information that you can expect from those OSes when they crash. Harold -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Tom Bozack Sent: Monday, July 22, 2002 10:32 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: problems with XFree I think Cygwin/XFree86 is a great product -- but there is nothing so good that it can't be improved. I agree with all of you comments, although I haven't had the system reboot experience. One persistant problem that you didn't mention (manybe you haven't run into it yet) is a very persistent and repeatable lock-up when used to login to another host using XDMCP. The symptom is of a sudden large memory leak after 15-30 minutes of use. XFree86 becomes unresponsive, system memory and swap resources are rapidly used up, and finally XFree86 crashes with a seg fault. This also happens immediately (you don't have to wait 15-30 min) when you logoff the host and login again. I've experienced this under Windows 98/98SE/ME. For me this is a showstopper since it makes Cygwin/XFree86 unusable as an X server platform. It's fun to play with, but this bug makes it unacceptable for routine use as an X server. Tom [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: (last email I sent complained about HTML MIME. i hope i'm not double-posting) I started playing with XFree last week. It's been a few years since I've used UNIX, so you can call me a newbie, if you like. I'm running Windows 2000 Pro on a P4 1.7 GHz with 768 MiB of RAM and 10 GB free on my hard drive. I (eventually) did a full Cygwin/XFree86 download and install (binaries, not source). Please don't flame me if I'm out of line. I didn't know if I should break this up into several emails or have one big one. Also, please send responses to me by email. Here are my obervations/problems. Showstoppers: 1) The very first time I brought up the X server, I had modified startxwin.bat to use wmaker instead of twm. It crashed because /home hadn't been created yet. This was fixed by running the text-mode bash icon first. 2) when I run Xman, it says No App-Defaults File. If I run Xman -notop instead, I can browse one man page, and then it stops working. (it gives a likeToSave message box with yes and no buttons that don't seem to do anything.) It seems to be related to missing a locale binary. Is there a way to get this to work? 3) within the first few hours of usage, I ran a find / -name abc -print from the command-line, and my trusty Windows 2000 box restarted. no blue screen, no error. it was like someone pulled the power plug and plugged it back in. after it came up, i tried the same command and it worked fine. 4) i had a similar restart to #6 when I ran setup.exe while cygwin was up. of course, bad user, i should have stopped cygwin before running setup, but i'm still amazed at how easily my robust kernel, based on NT Technology, came down. Nice-to-haves: 5) it'd be nice if setup.exe showed the size (in bytes or megabytes, etc.) of each package (it's in setup.ini). on my 56 Kb/s modem, downloading a large, unnecessary file takes a painfully long time, but a small unnecessary file is not so bad. 6) on that note, how about displaying those nice descriptions from setup.ini in setup.exe so we can see what the packages are before downloading them. a resizable window would come in handy for this. 7) the first time I downloaded (a partial download, not full), i picked more and clear, but next time I went into setup.exe, it had forgotten that. perhaps if I can unrust my C, I can fix some of these bugs myself. give me a few weeks. 8) the XFree86-fnts package is 16 MiB. it's kind of big. the first time i downloaded from http:uiuc, it got 98% and stopped responding--1 hour wasted (at 56 Kb). the second time (no joke) it got 99% and stopped--another hour wasted. so i copied it from somewhere else. 9) my X clients on an AIX box didn't work because i didn't use the -kb switch on XWin. but i found that one on the faq. a possible enhancement to setup.exe? 10) using K (or Ki) and B for byte on setup.exe is always nice. make sure to leave a space between
RE: problems with XFree
The message said to type xterm -help, not xfree -help. My error. Here is what I got: foreman@FOREMAN ~ $ xterm -help bash: xterm: command not found I suspect that it is because the xfree directories are not in the basic cygwin path. Again, for newbies, one cannot assume that they will know how to set this path or that it even needs to be set. To be a really helpful application, these things should be considered. As for the differences in xterm options between cygwin and SunOS, I will prepare a list of differences and validation of the errors I have received. regards, D. J. Foreman website: http://WWW.CS.Binghamton.EDU/~foreman -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Stuart Adamson Sent: Tuesday, July 23, 2002 5:14 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: problems with XFree From: Dennis Foreman [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] I have discovered differences in the parameters for xterm between Xfree and my SunOS system. Some Xfree parameters are deemed invalid on SunOS. Some SunOS parameters don't exist in xterm. XWin is the cygwin port of XFree86. I wouldn't expect XFree86 or the utilities to be command line compatable with OpenWindows. I would expect Xfree86/cygwin and utilities to be command line compatable as far as possible with XFree86 on other platforms however. Some don't work the same way, and some don't work on the cygwin as described in cygwin's man pages (if I read the man pages correctly, -sb for instance is supposed to take an integer argument, but doesn't). Is this xterm you are talking about? If so you're reading the man page wrongly. The command line you want is xterm -sb -sl 1000 where 1000 is the number of lines to save. The -sb just enables the scroll bar (you can have a scrolling xterm without a scroll bar) Also, when I get an xfree error in cygwin, it says to type xfree -help. Doing so produces an error. Out of interest - how do you get this error message to appear? xfree -help won't work because xfree isn't a program! If you have any examples for XFree86/cygwin behaving differently than XFree86 on other platforms then please post them. I'm guessing most will either have a good reason as to why they are different or be a slip or typo somewhere which will be easy to fix. Granted, the XWin man page is out of date now and could do with an update ... Stuart
Re: problems with XFree
Dennis Foreman wrote: The message said to type xterm -help, not xfree -help. My error. Here is what I got: foreman@FOREMAN ~ $ xterm -help bash: xterm: command not found I suspect that it is because the xfree directories are not in the basic cygwin path. Again, for newbies, one cannot assume that they will know how to set this path or that it even needs to be set. To be a really helpful application, these things should be considered. Yes, the problem is because /usr/X11R6/bin is not in the path by default. Yes, we have thought many, many times about how to fix this. No, no one has yet come up with a solution that will work for all cases. Yes, we are very much looking forward to your patch that fixes this problem. As for the differences in xterm options between cygwin and SunOS, I will prepare a list of differences and validation of the errors I have received. That won't be very useful to us. Sun almost certainly develops their xterm from their own code base, while XFree86's xterm is developed from a different code base. Comparing these two xterm's is just like comparing any other proprietary implementation of a UNIX utility with its primary free implementation (e.g., sed, awk, grep, etc). What would be extremely useful to us would be a list of differences between an xterm from XFree86 on Linux and an xterm under Cygwin. Any differences there are likely errors on the Cygwin side. However, no one has reported any differences to date. You have an alternative solution here. Sun, I believe, provides XFree86 packages for Solaris. You can install the XFree86 packages for Solaris and you will no longer have differences between the two commands. Remember, we Cygwin/XFree86 folks are but mere packagers of XFree86 for Cygwin; none of us work on xterm. If you have problems with xterm, you can take them up with the XFree86 project or with Thomas Dickey, the primary developer of XFree86's xterm: http://dickey.his.com/xterm/xterm.html Harold
RE: problems with XFree
I don't know about all the problems you are having, but I might be able to help with one at least. Number 2, No App-Defaults... If you do a fresh install, take a look and you will find a /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/app-defaults directory. Inside that directory is a Mwm file and an app-defaults link that points to /etc/X11/app-defaults. What I have done is move the Mwm file to /etc/X11/app-defaults, delete the /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/app-defaults directory, and create a app-defaults link in /usr/X11R6/lib/X11 that points to /etc/X11/app-defaults. Now, xman, xcalc, and several other programs that were not working will function correctly. This did it for me at least. Number 3, find... restart problem. I have had the find and touch commands cause my Windows 2000 box to reboot several times. Using the M$ debugging tools on the dump files points to a problem with the McAfee antivirus software we are running. I thought I had read about some problems with Cygwin and McAfee in the past, but I couldn't't say for sure. If you have McAfee though, you might want to take a look at that. Good Luck, -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, July 22, 2002 2:16 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: problems with XFree (last email I sent complained about HTML MIME. i hope i'm not double-posting) I started playing with XFree last week. It's been a few years since I've used UNIX, so you can call me a newbie, if you like. I'm running Windows 2000 Pro on a P4 1.7 GHz with 768 MiB of RAM and 10 GB free on my hard drive. I (eventually) did a full Cygwin/XFree86 download and install (binaries, not source). Please don't flame me if I'm out of line. I didn't know if I should break this up into several emails or have one big one. Also, please send responses to me by email. Here are my obervations/problems. Showstoppers: 1) The very first time I brought up the X server, I had modified startxwin.bat to use wmaker instead of twm. It crashed because /home hadn't been created yet. This was fixed by running the text-mode bash icon first. 2) when I run Xman, it says No App-Defaults File. If I run Xman -notop instead, I can browse one man page, and then it stops working. (it gives a likeToSave message box with yes and no buttons that don't seem to do anything.) It seems to be related to missing a locale binary. Is there a way to get this to work? 3) within the first few hours of usage, I ran a find / -name abc -print from the command-line, and my trusty Windows 2000 box restarted. no blue screen, no error. it was like someone pulled the power plug and plugged it back in. after it came up, i tried the same command and it worked fine. 4) i had a similar restart to #6 when I ran setup.exe while cygwin was up. of course, bad user, i should have stopped cygwin before running setup, but i'm still amazed at how easily my robust kernel, based on NT Technology, came down. Nice-to-haves: 5) it'd be nice if setup.exe showed the size (in bytes or megabytes, etc.) of each package (it's in setup.ini). on my 56 Kb/s modem, downloading a large, unnecessary file takes a painfully long time, but a small unnecessary file is not so bad. 6) on that note, how about displaying those nice descriptions from setup.ini in setup.exe so we can see what the packages are before downloading them. a resizable window would come in handy for this. 7) the first time I downloaded (a partial download, not full), i picked more and clear, but next time I went into setup.exe, it had forgotten that. perhaps if I can unrust my C, I can fix some of these bugs myself. give me a few weeks. 8) the XFree86-fnts package is 16 MiB. it's kind of big. the first time i downloaded from http:uiuc, it got 98% and stopped responding--1 hour wasted (at 56 Kb). the second time (no joke) it got 99% and stopped--another hour wasted. so i copied it from somewhere else. 9) my X clients on an AIX box didn't work because i didn't use the -kb switch on XWin. but i found that one on the faq. a possible enhancement to setup.exe? 10) using K (or Ki) and B for byte on setup.exe is always nice. make sure to leave a space between the number and the unit. 10 KB, not 10KB. how about estimated download time in addition to % ? 11) also, what's all that /b stuff about in startxwin.bat? gotos, etc. but there is no /b ! (there is no spoon either ;-) Please no one take offense at all this. I'm not trying to throw blame. It seems like a great product, so far (except for the deadly restarts). These are perhaps suggestions for doing it better. I know some coworkers who tried to get this to work, but gave up because of the problems. So will the average newbie or the busy IT pro who doesn't have time to read lots of faqs and will buy Exceed instead. I hope my observations will help others. Gabriel Sroka gsroka at mmsa dot com
RE: problems with XFree
--- Stuart Adamson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Granted, the XWin man page is out of date now and could do with an update ... Patches are, as usual, Gratefully Accepted. Cheers, Nicholas __ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Health - Feel better, live better http://health.yahoo.com
Re: problems with XFree
Why not install a file in /etc/profile.d ? Yes, the problem is because /usr/X11R6/bin is not in the path by default. Yes, we have thought many, many times about how to fix this. No, no one has yet come up with a solution that will work for all cases. Yes, we are very much looking forward to your patch that fixes this problem. ___ Do You Yahoo!? -- Une adresse yahoo.fr gratuite et en français ! Yahoo! Mail : http://fr.mail.yahoo.com
Re: problems with xfree
On Tue, Jul 23, 2002 at 10:13:37AM +0100, Stuart Adamson wrote: 3) within the first few hours of usage, I ran a find / -name abc -print from the command-line, and my trusty Windows 2000 box restarted. If that crashed your windows box then that sounds like a bug in either Windows 2000 or base cygwin - rather than the Xfree86 port. If the system rebooted due to the running of a non-privileged program then it is a problem with the system not with the program. but i'm still amazed at how easily my robust kernel, based on NT Technology, came down. You amazed that it stayed up long enough for you to run the cygwin installer? ;) I've never had a problem keeping an NT system running. One thing to look at is memory usage. Cygwin is a bit hard on memory usage. Could it be that your exhausting memory and that's killing everything? I am not aware of Cygwin being particularly hard on memory usage. 5) it'd be nice if setup.exe showed the size (in bytes or megabytes, etc.) of each package (it's in setup.ini). on my 56 Kb/s modem, downloading a large, unnecessary file takes a painfully long time, but a small unnecessary file is not so bad. setup.exe is a base cygwin thing as well. You'll need to talk to [EMAIL PROTECTED] for that. But first, of course, it would behoove anyone with a suggestion to take a step back and consider a simple fact of life -- it's likely that almost any suggestion you could think of has already been made. You could just fire off suggestions blindly or you could actually do some research and see where the current state of setup development may be heading. Lack of functionality in setup.exe is not due to someone not thinking of something, it's generally a function of someone not having enough time to do something. So, as always, we need doers not thinkers. cgf
Re: problems with XFree
Dennis, Dennis Foreman wrote: Harold, My problems are not with the code base and hence the implementation, but rather the lack of conformity between the different implementations as to the arguments allowed. If you know your UNIX history, you know that what hurt its widespread usage most was the inability of developers to rely upon consistent implementations. Different arguments, different actions, different shells, different everything else makes for lovely sandboxes, but hardly provides a basis for widely-accepted applications. For future reference, just assume that I am an old timer. You are completely allowed to have a problem with the difference between the two implementations. GNU, Linux, XFree86, and other open-source and free-software projects were started partly in response to the fact that the UNIX industry had failed miserably at maintaining any sort of compatibility with each other. One major problem with closed-source UNIX operating systems is that there are so many utilities in the operating system that not every utility gets fixed in every release. In fact, you might be using a UNIX release from 2002 that contains a version of sed that hasn't been updated since 1990. As I said before, if you are angry at Solaris for these discrepencies, you can take it up with them. If you are angry that XFree86's xterm is not compatible with Solaris's xterm, then you will have to take it up with the xterm developers and see if you can convince them to make changes on your behalf. Or, you can submit patch files to the xterm maintainers, which they are much more likely to accept that mere talk of changes. With open-source and free-software you at least have the option of contributing. Try contributing to Solaris's xterm and let us know how far you get. You need to realize that Cygwin/XFree86 is only a Cygwin port of XFree86. For any general questions about XFree86 (such as those related to xterm), *YOU HAVE TO TALK TO THE XFREE86 PROJECT*. The XFree86 project is located here: http://xfree86.org/ If you have a problem with XFree86's xterm, *YOU HAVE TO TAKE IT UP WITH THE XTERM MAINTAINER*: http://dickey.his.com/xterm/xterm.html I used to make a living designing OS's. It was fun. But the goal was always to remember that we had CUSTOMERS (external-paying and internal-free) who needed consistency from release to release and products that were compatible across vendors. To remember that we needed to produce programs with the same core set of options, clear delineation of 'vendor-specific options' and most of all, user-friendly support that recognized that not all users should have to be guru's. If you want to stop people from using something, try making them feel stupid. Then no one will really care if yours is the best. Sure. I have written a User's Guide for the Cygwin-specific XFree86 features. The XFree86 project has extensive documentation for all XFree86 programs, libraries, extensions, etc. I will be perfectly willing to give you support if you are willng to pay me the same rate for support that you are used to forking over to commerical UNIX vendors. However, no amount of blather coming from anyone will convince me that my time is better spent in front of my computer than with my fiance. This is my hobby, not my livelihood. PS. I apologize for sending email directly to you. As a user of many lists, I did not think it necessary to look at the to line in my mail pgm to see the actual recipient. My own list programs automatically modify the header before sending posts to the list-members. Since I am OBVIOUSLY a MS Windows user, one MIGHT expect that I also use MS Outlook, which does NOT give me anything but reply and reply to all. That doesn't make it inferior, just different. Wow. Did you miss the fact that I am writing an X Window System server for Microsoft Windows? Doesn't that sort of imply that I primarily use Windows? Microsoft Outlook? Yup, I use that too. I hit reply-to-all and I swap the addresses and remove addresses as necessary. I do the same thing in Mozilla. PPS. My proposed patch is for the installation of Xfree (by setup) to modify the cygwin.bat file to include the Xfree86 directory in the user's path. Which is what I did manually. (You might include a check to see if it's been moved.) This adds no cost to non-Xfree users and is necessary anyway for those who do use Xfree. OS/2 used to have a line in some of its install programs asking if the user wanted certain files modified for them (like config.sys). regards, D. J. Foreman, Ph. D. Dept of Computer Science Binghamton University website: http://WWW.CS.Binghamton.EDU/~foreman We have at times debated whether or not to add /usr/X11R6/bin to the path in cygwin.bat. I do not recall where the discussion about that left off. You can search the mailing list archives and let us know. Then you can make the proposed change to
RE: problems with XFree
Harold, Since you admit to having to play with addresses, could you PLEASE not send postings to me twice. I am now getting ONE from the LIST and ANOTHER direct, for YOUR replies to my postings. Since you deprecated my use of your personal email address, I have no recourse but to post my reply here. After this, I will remain silent, use what's here and take my lumps. If freeware was supposed to stop the incompatibilities across multiple incarnations of UNIX, it has failed. Code that works on one Linux fails on another (see postings to pthreads LEDA lists), code that works on LINUX fails on SunOS or AIX. I don't see any improvement to the end user. My days as an active programmer are over. The option of contributing assumes I know something about the internals of UNIX. I don't. And I don't want to either. I am now taking time to enjoy my family (as you want to enjoy yours). I do however occasionally need to delve into the UNIX environment, so there are some tools I use that may not be commercially available or which I am directed to use by others. Will the REAL UNIX please stand up? There are MANY arguments for/against any specific version. I don't really care. I just want code that's easy to use, works and runs as documented. Look what happened to OS/2. Great capabilities, lousy documentation, hard to use by novices. Look at MSWins: fair abilities, decent (not great) docs and REALLY easy to use for novices doing common things. Look who has the market share! How many PC's come with ANY version of Linux as the default? BTW, since Solaris came first, why not emulate what they had? And make it better. regards, D. J. Foreman, Ph. D. Dept of Computer Science Binghamton University website: http://WWW.CS.Binghamton.EDU/~foreman -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Harold L Hunt II Sent: Tuesday, July 23, 2002 3:29 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: problems with XFree Dennis, Dennis Foreman wrote: Harold, My problems are not with the code base and hence the implementation, but rather the lack of conformity between the different implementations as to the arguments allowed. If you know your UNIX history, you know that what hurt its widespread usage most was the inability of developers to rely upon consistent implementations. Different arguments, different actions, different shells, different everything else makes for lovely sandboxes, but hardly provides a basis for widely-accepted applications. For future reference, just assume that I am an old timer. You are completely allowed to have a problem with the difference between the two implementations. GNU, Linux, XFree86, and other open-source and free-software projects were started partly in response to the fact that the UNIX industry had failed miserably at maintaining any sort of compatibility with each other. One major problem with closed-source UNIX operating systems is that there are so many utilities in the operating system that not every utility gets fixed in every release. In fact, you might be using a UNIX release from 2002 that contains a version of sed that hasn't been updated since 1990. As I said before, if you are angry at Solaris for these discrepencies, you can take it up with them. If you are angry that XFree86's xterm is not compatible with Solaris's xterm, then you will have to take it up with the xterm developers and see if you can convince them to make changes on your behalf. Or, you can submit patch files to the xterm maintainers, which they are much more likely to accept that mere talk of changes. With open-source and free-software you at least have the option of contributing. Try contributing to Solaris's xterm and let us know how far you get. You need to realize that Cygwin/XFree86 is only a Cygwin port of XFree86. For any general questions about XFree86 (such as those related to xterm), *YOU HAVE TO TALK TO THE XFREE86 PROJECT*. The XFree86 project is located here: http://xfree86.org/ If you have a problem with XFree86's xterm, *YOU HAVE TO TAKE IT UP WITH THE XTERM MAINTAINER*: http://dickey.his.com/xterm/xterm.html I used to make a living designing OS's. It was fun. But the goal was always to remember that we had CUSTOMERS (external-paying and internal-free) who needed consistency from release to release and products that were compatible across vendors. To remember that we needed to produce programs with the same core set of options, clear delineation of 'vendor-specific options' and most of all, user-friendly support that recognized that not all users should have to be guru's. If you want to stop people from using something, try making them feel stupid. Then no one will really care if yours is the best. Sure. I have written a User's Guide for the Cygwin-specific XFree86 features. The XFree86 project has extensive documentation for all XFree86 programs, libraries, extensions, etc. I will be perfectly willing
Re: problems with XFree
Dennis Foreman wrote: Harold, Since you admit to having to play with addresses, could you PLEASE not send postings to me twice. I am now getting ONE from the LIST and ANOTHER direct, for YOUR replies to my postings. Since you deprecated my use of your personal email address, I have no recourse but to post my reply here. After this, I will remain silent, use what's here and take my lumps. No problem. Your message was unclear as to whether it was intentionally sent off-list. You seemed to blame Outlook for your troubles later in the message, so I went ahead and cc'd cygwin-xfree. If freeware was supposed to stop the incompatibilities across multiple incarnations of UNIX, it has failed. Code that works on one Linux fails on another (see postings to pthreads LEDA lists), code that works on LINUX fails on SunOS or AIX. I don't see any improvement to the end user. My days as an active programmer are over. The option of contributing assumes I know something about the internals of UNIX. I don't. And I don't want to either. I am now taking time to enjoy my family (as you want to enjoy yours). I do however occasionally need to delve into the UNIX environment, so there are some tools I use that may not be commercially available or which I am directed to use by others. With open-source and free-software you have two choices: 1) Take what you get 2) Don't take what you get Unless, of course, you are willing to contribute. As for knowledge of how UNIX works... I had no knowledge when I started working on this project and I still have hardly any knowledge. However, I am able to read the docs and the source to learn what I need on a daily basis. Anyone can easily contribute to this project in less than a week, if not a single day. Will the REAL UNIX please stand up? There are MANY arguments for/against any specific version. I don't really care. I just want code that's easy to use, works and runs as documented. Look what happened to OS/2. Great capabilities, lousy documentation, hard to use by novices. Look at MSWins: fair abilities, decent (not great) docs and REALLY easy to use for novices doing common things. Look who has the market share! How many PC's come with ANY version of Linux as the default? A valid observation, but you forgot one thing: we are not paid to do this. BTW, since Solaris came first, why not emulate what they had? And make it better. [Smoke billows from Harold's keyboard as he quickly rewrites 20 years of open-source and free-software to be compatible with Solaris, because Dennis Foreman thought it would be a neat idea.] Nice idea, but you will have to work on that one yourself. regards, D. J. Foreman, Ph. D. Dept of Computer Science Binghamton University website: http://WWW.CS.Binghamton.EDU/~foreman Harold
RE: problems with XFree
[Smoke billows from Harold's keyboard as he quickly rewrites 20 years of open-source and free-software to be compatible with Solaris, because Dennis Foreman thought it would be a neat idea.] Nice idea, but you will have to work on that one yourself. It's not my idea. I have been to conferences where customers begged for compatibility. In fact, I was the founder of the IBM VM Compatibility Review Board in the 80's. I got a lot of code changed to make it compatible. I didn't make a lot of friends doing it. Compatibility with the past begins with one person, today, having the guts to say: I'm going to make MY code compatible. Then convincing others to do the same. regards, D. J. Foreman, Ph. D. Dept of Computer Science Binghamton University website: http://WWW.CS.Binghamton.EDU/~foreman Harold
Re: problems with XFree
I think Cygwin/XFree86 is a great product -- but there is nothing so good that it can't be improved. I agree with all of you comments, although I haven't had the system reboot experience. One persistant problem that you didn't mention (manybe you haven't run into it yet) is a very persistent and repeatable lock-up when used to login to another host using XDMCP. The symptom is of a sudden large memory leak after 15-30 minutes of use. XFree86 becomes unresponsive, system memory and swap resources are rapidly used up, and finally XFree86 crashes with a seg fault. This also happens immediately (you don't have to wait 15-30 min) when you logoff the host and login again. I've experienced this under Windows 98/98SE/ME. For me this is a showstopper since it makes Cygwin/XFree86 unusable as an X server platform. It's fun to play with, but this bug makes it unacceptable for routine use as an X server. Tom [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: (last email I sent complained about HTML MIME. i hope i'm not double-posting) I started playing with XFree last week. It's been a few years since I've used UNIX, so you can call me a newbie, if you like. I'm running Windows 2000 Pro on a P4 1.7 GHz with 768 MiB of RAM and 10 GB free on my hard drive. I (eventually) did a full Cygwin/XFree86 download and install (binaries, not source). Please don't flame me if I'm out of line. I didn't know if I should break this up into several emails or have one big one. Also, please send responses to me by email. Here are my obervations/problems. Showstoppers: 1) The very first time I brought up the X server, I had modified startxwin.bat to use wmaker instead of twm. It crashed because /home hadn't been created yet. This was fixed by running the text-mode bash icon first. 2) when I run Xman, it says No App-Defaults File. If I run Xman -notop instead, I can browse one man page, and then it stops working. (it gives a likeToSave message box with yes and no buttons that don't seem to do anything.) It seems to be related to missing a locale binary. Is there a way to get this to work? 3) within the first few hours of usage, I ran a find / -name abc -print from the command-line, and my trusty Windows 2000 box restarted. no blue screen, no error. it was like someone pulled the power plug and plugged it back in. after it came up, i tried the same command and it worked fine. 4) i had a similar restart to #6 when I ran setup.exe while cygwin was up. of course, bad user, i should have stopped cygwin before running setup, but i'm still amazed at how easily my robust kernel, based on NT Technology, came down. Nice-to-haves: 5) it'd be nice if setup.exe showed the size (in bytes or megabytes, etc.) of each package (it's in setup.ini). on my 56 Kb/s modem, downloading a large, unnecessary file takes a painfully long time, but a small unnecessary file is not so bad. 6) on that note, how about displaying those nice descriptions from setup.ini in setup.exe so we can see what the packages are before downloading them. a resizable window would come in handy for this. 7) the first time I downloaded (a partial download, not full), i picked more and clear, but next time I went into setup.exe, it had forgotten that. perhaps if I can unrust my C, I can fix some of these bugs myself. give me a few weeks. 8) the XFree86-fnts package is 16 MiB. it's kind of big. the first time i downloaded from http:uiuc, it got 98% and stopped responding--1 hour wasted (at 56 Kb). the second time (no joke) it got 99% and stopped--another hour wasted. so i copied it from somewhere else. 9) my X clients on an AIX box didn't work because i didn't use the -kb switch on XWin. but i found that one on the faq. a possible enhancement to setup.exe? 10) using K (or Ki) and B for byte on setup.exe is always nice. make sure to leave a space between the number and the unit. 10 KB, not 10KB. how about estimated download time in addition to % ? 11) also, what's all that /b stuff about in startxwin.bat? gotos, etc. but there is no /b ! (there is no spoon either ;-) Please no one take offense at all this. I'm not trying to throw blame. It seems like a great product, so far (except for the deadly restarts). These are perhaps suggestions for doing it better. I know some coworkers who tried to get this to work, but gave up because of the problems. So will the average newbie or the busy IT pro who doesn't have time to read lots of faqs and will buy Exceed instead. I hope my observations will help others. Gabriel Sroka gsroka at mmsa dot com
RE: Problems getting xfree up and running was: Re: question
Well this mail came there so you managed to do it :-) Lets get started! Gentlemen, this fellow of ours is having a problem, he have downloaded xfree, installed it, I think all by the manual.. (I assisted him a little and can fill out with some of my thoughts) When he runs startxwin.bat/sh the X-window pops up, but then closes. Reading the /tmp/Xlog.txt (or what the file is called) the last thing printed there was that it couldn't find font fixed, when doublechecking he seemed to have the font 6x13-ISO8859-1.pcf.gz in /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc Try installing fonts manually... by using gunzip and tar xvf This problem a few users reported a few times. Is Cygwin disk mounted in binary or Text mode? Do a mount command and make sure it is in binary mode. (dug up the fontfilename from my fonts.alias and fonts.dir) (Payam, send the logfile to the list) He has two network cards, could it be something there messing up?? I doubt two network cards should report fixed font problem. Suhaib /Andy -- The eye of the beholder rests on the beauty!
