After you have added the required settings and setup a working network,
run the xf86config
program to create a standard configuration file
in Y:\XFree86\lib\X11\XF86Config
from a windowed
or full screen OS/2 text session:
[C:\] xf86config
The xf86config
program will ask a number of questions. You will need
the information obtained from the SuperProbe program here. The program should
be self explanatory; if you have problems to understand something though, seek
assistance in the newsgroups.
It is possible, but strongly discouraged for the non-expert, to edit the
XF86Config
file with a text editor. In a few situations as described in
the FAQ, however, this might even be mandatory. This file is not a hacker's area,
such as the Win95 registry, but it has in common with it that you can
easily cause damage.
For details about the XF86Config
file format, refer to the
XF86Config(4/5) manual page.
If you know the configuration process from Linux or other XFree86 platform, you will encounter a few differences:
DEVICE=D:\OS2\BOOT\PCLOGIC.SYS SERIAL=COM1
DEVICE=D:\OS2\BOOT\MOUSE.SYS TYPE=PCLOGIC$
for a MouseSystems compatible mouse, for instance.xf86config
program. If you
encounter incorrect settings, please send a mail to XFree86@XFree86.org
describing in detail what is wrong. Even with XKB, you have the option
to replace some key settings with a xmodmap file. See the man page
for xmodmap for details (or use some available xmodmap file from Linux -
they are the same).In most cases, an existing XF86Config
file for the same XFree86 version
from Linux or another platform may be used without changes. There are two
prominent exceptions: some S3 805 based VLB cards put their video memory
in odd locations, and there seems to be an unresolvable PM driver
inconsistency with Matrox cards.
For S3 VLB cards, the X server can search for this memory by experimentally mapping and unmapping possible memory regions. However, in XFree86/OS2, the OS may run out of memory tiles during this process. If this happens, you must find out the location of the memory yourself and add it as an option
MemBase 0x12345678
to the section "Device" of your XF86Config file.
For Matrox cards, the X server may fail to detect the PCI ID of the card correctly, as the PM driver and Matrox BIOS may have reprogrammed the card's PCI configuration in a non-standard way. The server will then fall into a VGA compatible mode at 320x200 resolution. To prevent this, add a
PCIProbe2
to the section "ServerFlags" of your XF86Config file.
Once you've set up a XF86Config file, you can fine tune the video
modes with the xvidtune
utility. Note this is an X11 program which
has to be executed in a local xterm window of a running X server, not in
a PM window.
16mb of memory is a recommended minimum for running the network software, X and the presentation manager in parallel. The server, window manager and an xterm take about 4-6 Mb of memory themselves. X will start up on a system with 8MB or less, but the performance will severely suffer from heavy disk swapping. Your mileage may vary, though, so some people might consider this still tolerable.
Some more on resource requirements: With the arrival of complex desktops like WindowMaker, KDE, Gnome, Enlightment, etc. which add a lot of graphical features, resource requirements grow. The X server will cache used fonts and resource settings internally, and depending on the number of windows (backing- store) it may require much more memory and swapspace than the mentioned few MBs. Also take into consideration that X runs in parallel to PM which also takes its share. My own system, albeit meanwhile rather outdated, is a PII-233 with 128MB, however, it is a development system. 64 MB are meanwhile standard, and okay for the purpose, and my laptop runs Aurora with XFree86 in 32MB, as well.
The easiest way for new users to start X windows is to type:
startx
in a PM CMD window. People have
reported problems when starting this in a fullscreen session or through
a remote telnet session, so don't try it.
To get out of X windows, type: ``exit
'' in the console xterm.
You can customize your X by creating .xinitrc
, .xserverrc
,
and .twmrc
files in the directory that the HOME
environment
variable points to. These files are described in the xinit and startx
man pages.
By default, the systemwide xinitrc
file (in Y:/XFree86/lib/X11/xinit/xinitrc.cmd
)
installs the rather simplistic twm
window manager. You can find better
window managers on the ported software page at
http://ais.gmd.de/~veit/os2/xf86ported.html .
Do you really want to rebuild XFree86/OS2 from source? Read the file OS2.Notes on details to recompile XFree86/OS2 from scratch.
The easiest way to build a new client (X application) is to use
xmkmf
if an Imakefile
is included in the sources. Type
``xmkmf -a
'' to create the Makefiles, check the configuration if
necessary and type ``xmake
''. ``xmake
'' is a wrapper for the
GNU make program which defeats the improper SHELL setting typically found
in a Makefile generated from an Imakefile. Also see the XFree86/OS2 FAQ
for more hints about porting X clients.
Many thanks to:
$XFree86: xc/programs/Xserver/hw/xfree86/doc/sgml/OS2.sgml,v 3.9.2.11 1999/12/20 12:55:51 hohndel Exp $ $XConsortium: OS2.sgml /main/4 1996/03/11 10:46:06 kaleb $