README for XFree86 4.2.0 on NetBSD Rich Murphey, David Dawes, Marc Wandschneider, Mark Weaver, Matthieu Herrb Last modified on: 16 January 2002 1. What and Where is XFree86? XFree86 is the Open Source port of X.Org's X11R6.6 release that supports sev- eral UNIX(R) and UNIX-like (such as Linux, the BSDs and Solaris x86) operat- ing systems on Intel and other platforms. See the Copyright Notice. The sources for XFree86 are available by anonymous ftp from: ftp://ftp.XFree86.org/pub/XFree86/4.2.0 Binaries for NetBSD 1.4 and later are available from: ftp://ftp.XFree86.org/pub/XFree86/4.2.0/binaries/NetBSD A list of mirror sites is provided by http://www.xfree86.org/MIRRORS.shtml XFree86 also builds on other NetBSD architectures. See section Building on other architectures (section 8.4, page 1) for details. XFree86 also supports NetBSD on PC98 machines. 2. Bug Reports for This Document Send email to (Matthieu Herrb) or if you have comments or suggestions about this file and we'll revise it. 3. New OS dependent features See the Release Notes for non-OS dependent new features in XFree86 4.2.0. 3.1 New OS dependent features in 4.2.0 o Support of client side on NetBSD/sparc64 o Support for in-kernel MTRR and AGP support in NetBSD 1.5Y 3.2 New OS dependent features in 4.1.0 o Enable wide characters support in NetBSD 1.5P and later. 3.3 New OS dependent features in 4.0.2 o A fix for libXmu OS detection which was broken since unix isn't defined anymore by the C preprocessor. o (limited) native wscons support. This is not activated by default. o Updates to the aperture driver o Support for multithread libraries with GNU pth o Add /usr/pkg/bin to the default user path. 3.4 New OS dependent features in 4.0.1 o Support for NetBSD 1.5_ALPHA o The Xsun server can be built on NetBSD/sparc 3.5 New OS dependent features in 4.0 o Preliminary APM support. 3.6 New OS dependent features in 3.9.18 o Soft-booting secondary cards through the int10 BIOS interface is now possible using the x86emu real mode emulator. 3.7 New OS dependent features in 3.9.17 o Support for silken mouse with the wsmouse protocol has been added. o A new version of the XFree86 Aperture driver which provides MTRR support is included. 4. Installing the Binaries Refer to the Installation Document for detailed installation instructions. 5. Configuring X for Your Hardware The /etc/X11/XF86Config file tells the X server what kind of monitor, video card and mouse you have. You must create it to tell the server what specific hardware you have. You'll need info on your hardware: o Your mouse type, baud rate and its /dev entry. o The video card's chipset (e.g. ET4000, S3, etc). o Your monitor's sync frequencies. The recommended way to generate an XF86Config file is to use the xf86cfg utility. The xf86config text utility is still there for the (few) cases where xf86cfg can't be used. Also, there is a sample file installed as /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/XF86Config.eg, which can be used as a starting point. For details about the XF86Config file format, refer to the XF86Config(5) man- ual page. Once you've set up a XF86Config file, you can fine tune the video modes with the xvidtune utility. 5.1 About mouse configuration XFree86 4.2.0 has support for the mouse driver included in the wscons console driver introduced by NetBSD 1.4. Specify ``wsmouse'' as the protocol and ``/dev/wsmouse0'' as the device in /etc/X11/XF86Config if you're using NetBSD 1.4 or later with a PS/2 mouse. For older releases, the NetBSD pms mouse driver handles PS/2 style mice as Busmouse. Specify the protocol as ``busmouse'' in the mouse section of your XF86Config file if you're using a PS/2 mouse with NetBSD 1.3 or former releases. Only standard PS/2 mice are supported by this driver. Newest PS/2 mice that send more than three bytes at a time (especially Intellimouse, or MouseMan+ with a wheel) are not supported by NetBSD 1.3 and former releases. See README.mouse for general instruction on mouse configuration in XFree86. 6. Running X The easiest way for new users to start X windows is to type: startx >& startx.log Error messages are lost unless you redirect them because the server takes over the screen. To get out of X windows, type: ``exit'' in the console xterm. You can cus- tomize your X by creating .xinitrc, .xserverrc, and .twmrc files in your home directory as described in the xinit and startx man pages. 6.1 Starting Xdm, the display manager To start the display manager, log in as root on the console and type: ``xdm -nodaemon''. You can start xdm automatically on bootup by changing the line xdm=NO xdm_flags="" # x11 display manager to: xdm=YES xdm_flags="" # x11 display manager in /etc/rc.conf. Under NetBSD 1.4 and later with the wscons console driver, you must enable a virtual console for the X server first. To do this follow these steps: o Make sure the device file exists. If not, ``cd /dev ; ./MAKEDEV wscons''. o Next, make sure your kernel wants to do wscons. (see below (section 7.1, page 1)). o Next, make sure ``wscons=YES'' in /etc/rc.conf. o Next, make sure /etc/wscons.conf exists. The relevant bits: #screen 0 - vt100 screen 1 - vt100 screen 2 - vt100 screen 3 - vt100 screen 4 - - screen 5 - vt100 (Thanks to Mason Loring Bliss for this explanation) Note that the binary distributions of XFree86 for NetBSD don't include sup- port for the XDM-AUTHORIZATION-1 protocol. 7. Kernel Support for X To make sure X support is enabled under NetBSD, the following line must be in your config file in /sys/arch/i386/conf: options XSERVER, UCONSOLE 7.1 Console drivers The server supports the standard NetBSD/i386 console drivers: pccons, pcvt and wscons (in pcvt compatibility mode). They are detected at runtime and no configuration of the server itself is required. The pccons driver is the most widely tested and is the console driver con- tained in the NetBSD binary distribution's kernels. The pcvt console driver was bundled with NetBSD until 1.4. The pcvt X mode is compatible with the pccons driver X mode. It offers several virtual consoles and international keyboard support. In order to use this driver, change the line: device pc0 at isa? port "IO_KBD" irq 1 to device vt0 at isa? port "IO_KBD" irq 1 in your kernel config file, and rebuild and install your kernel. Wscons is the current console driver, included in NetBSD 1.4 and later. For now, XFree86 supports wscons using the pcvt compatibility mode, so be sure to have the lines: options WSDISPLAY_COMPAT_PCVT # emulate some ioctls options WSDISPLAY_COMPAT_SYSCONS # emulate some ioctls options WSDISPLAY_COMPAT_USL # VT handling options WSDISPLAY_COMPAT_RAWKBD # can get raw scancodes in your kernel configuration file if you're using wscons. Refer to the wscons(4) and wsmouse(4) manual pages for informations on how to configure wscons into the kernel. 7.2 Aperture Driver By default NetBSD include the BSD 4.4 kernel security feature that disable access to the /dev/mem device when in multi-users mode. But XFree86 servers can take advantage (or require) linear access to the display memory. Most XFree86 4.2.0 card drivers require linear memory access. There are two ways to allow XFree86 to access linear memory: The first way is to disable the kernel security feature by adding ``option INSECURE'' in the kernel configuration file and build a new kernel. The second way is to install the aperture driver, included in source form in xc/programs/Xserver/hw/xfree86/etc/apNetBSD.shar in the XFree86 4.2.0 source distribution. Unpack it in a new directory of your choice by running: sh apNetBSD.shar By default the aperture driver will be installed in /usr/local/aperture. You can change this default directory by editing Makefile.inc before building it. Then run ``make build'' as root to install it. To enable it, add the follow- ing line to /etc/lkm.conf: /usr/local/aperture/lkm/xf86.o - - /usr/local/aperture/lkm/xf86_mod_install - - and set ``lkm=YES'' in /etc/rc.conf Reboot your system. XFree86 will auto-detect the aperture driver if avail- able. Warning 1: if you boot another kernel than /netbsd, loadable kernel modules can crash your system. Always boot in single user mode when you want to run another kernel. Warning 2: the aperture driver only allows one access at a time (so that the system is in the same security state once X is launched). This means that if you run multiple servers on multiples VT, only the first one will have linear memory access. Use ``option INSECURE'' if you need more that one X server at a time. Starting with XFree86 3.9.17, the XFree86 aperture driver also supports MTRR write combining on Pentiums II and AMD K6 class processors. 7.3 MIT-SHM NetBSD 1.0 and later supports System V shared memory. If XFree86 detects this support in your kernel, it will support the MIT-SHM extension. To add support for system V shared memory to your kernel add the lines: # System V-like IPC options SYSVMSG options SYSVSEM options SYSVSHM to your kernel config file. 8. Rebuilding the XFree86 Distribution You should configure the distribution by editing xc/config/cf/host.def before compiling. To compile the sources, invoke ``make World'' in the xc directory. 8.1 Perl support Starting with XFree86 4.0.2, perl is needed to build the fonts in XFree86. Since perl is not included with standard NetBSD installation, fonts that need perl are not built by default. If you have installed perl (from the NetBSD packages, for instance), add the line #define HasPerl YES in xc/config/cf/host.def before rebuilding XFree86. 8.2 Aperture driver To build the XFree86 server with the Aperture driver enabled, you should unpack apNetBSD.shar and install it first. Then edit xc/config/cf/host.def and add the line #define HasNetBSDApertureDriver YES to it before rebuilding XFree86. 8.3 Console drivers XFree86 has a configuration option to select the console drivers to use in host.def: o if you're using pccons put: #define XFree86ConsoleDefines -DPCCONS_SUPPORT o if you're using pcvt put: #define XFree86ConsoleDefines -DPCVT_SUPPORT If you don't define XFree86ConsoleDefines in host.def the pccons and pcvt drivers will be supported by default. Experimental native support for the wscons console driver can be built by adding: #define XFree86ConsoleDefines -DWSCONS_SUPPORT to xc/config/host.def before rebuilding the server. This has not been thor- oughly tested, except on the macppc. For the i386, you should include both pcvt and wscons support in order to use the pcvt compatibility mode of wscons: #define XFree86ConsoleDefines -DPCVT_SUPPORT -DWSCONS_SUPPORT 8.4 Building on other architectures Note that the NetBSD project has now its own source tree, based on the XFree86 source tree, with some local modifications. You may want to start with this tree to rebuild from sources. The NetBSD xsrc source tree is available at: ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-current/xsrc/ 9. Building New X Clients 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 Make- files, check the configuration if necessary and type ``make''. Whenever you install additional man pages you should update whatis.db by running ``make- whatis /usr/X11R6/man''. When porting clients to *BSD systems, make use of the symbol BSD for code which is truly BSD-specific. The value of the symbol can be used to distin- guish different BSD releases. For example, code specific to the Net-2 and later releases can use: #if (BSD >= 199103) To ensure that this symbol is correctly defined, include in the source that requires it. Note that the symbol CSRG_BASED is defined for *BSD systems in XFree86 3.1.1 and later. This should be used to protect the inclusion of . For code that really is specific to a particular i386 BSD port, use __FreeBSD__ for FreeBSD, __NetBSD__ for NetBSD, __OpenBSD__ for OpenBSD, and __bsdi__ for BSD/386. 10. Thanks Many thanks to all people who contributed to make XFree86 work on *BSD, in particular, David Dawes, Pace Willison, Amancio Hasty, Christoph Robitschko, Nate Williams, Rod Grimes, Jack Velte and Michael Smith. Generated from XFree86: xc/programs/Xserver/hw/xfree86/doc/sgml/NetBSD.sgml,v 3.63 2002/01/16 22:35:18 herrb Exp $