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- Installation Details for XFree86[tm] 4.0
-
- The XFree86 Project, Inc
-
- 29 February 2000
-
- Abstract
-
- This document contains information about installing XFree86 4.0.
-
- 1. Introduction
-
- This document contains information about installing XFree86 4.0 binary dis-
- tributions as provided by The XFree86 Project. The installation procedures
- for binary distributions provided by others may be different.
-
- The XFree86 binary distributions that we provide for UNIX-like OSs are pack-
- aged in the platform-independent gzipped tar format (referred to as "tar-
- balls"). Our tarballs can be identified by the ".tgz" suffix. We do not
- provide binaries in RPM format or any other platform specific package format.
- If you need them in such a format, you should contact your OS vendor.
- Together with the binary distributions, we provide a customised version of
- GNU tar called "extract", and an installation script. We recommend that
- these be used to install the binary distributions.
-
- 2. How to get the XFree86 4.0 binary distributions
-
- We, The XFree86 Project, provide XFree86 4.0 binaries for a range of operat-
- ing systems at our ftp site <URL:ftp://ftp.xfree86.org/pub/XFree86/4.0/bina-
- ries/>. Our ftp site is also mirrored by many sites around the world. There
- is a sub-directory for each OS/platform that we have binaries for. The first
- thing you need to do is to decide which of these suits you. In most cases,
- the choice is straightforward. In some cases (e.g., Linux) there may be a
- number of choices depending on what architecture or libc version you are
- using. We recommend that you first download the Xinstall.sh script, and run
- it as follows to find out which binary distribution you should download.
-
- sh Xinstall.sh -check
-
- This should tell you which binary distribution is the correct one for your
- system. Getting this right may save from wasting time downloading the wrong
- distribution.
-
- The next step is to download the necessary files. The mandatory files for
- all installations are listed below. All of them must be downloaded to do the
- installation. The installer script will complain if they are not all pre-
- sent.
-
- Xinstall.sh The installer script
- extract The utility for extracting tarballs
- Xbin.tgz X clients/utilities and run-time libraries
- Xlib.tgz Some data files required at run-time
- Xman.tgz Manual pages
- Xdoc.tgz XFree86 documentation
- Xfnts.tgz Base set of fonts
- Xfenc.tgz Base set of font encoding data
- Xetc.tgz Run-time configuration files
- Xvar.tgz Run-time data
- Xxserv.tgz XFree86 X server
- Xmod.tgz XFree86 X server modules
-
- NOTES:
-
- o Some web browsers have a problem downloading the extract utility cor-
- rectly. If you encounter this problem, download the version called
- extract.exe instead. The ".exe" suffix is only there to make the trou-
- blesome web browsers do the right thing. It is not a DOS/Windows exe-
- cutable.
-
- o A few distributions don't have or require the Xvar.tgz tarball. If it
- is present in the binaries sub-directory for your platform, then it is
- required.
-
- o Some distributions may have additional mandatory tarballs. This is
- rare. In these cases, the installer script will tell you if any are
- missing.
-
- The following tarballs are optional. You should download the ones you want
- to install.
-
- Xfsrv.tgz Font server
- Xnest.tgz Nested X server
- Xprog.tgz X header files, config files and compile-time libs
- Xprt.tgz X Print server
- Xvfb.tgz Virtual framebuffer X server
- Xf100.tgz 100dpi fonts
- Xfcyr.tgz Cyrillic fonts
- Xflat2.tgz Latin-2 fonts
- Xfnon.tgz Some large bitmap fonts
- Xfscl.tgz Scalable fonts (Speedo and Type1)
- Xhtml.tgz HTML version of the documentation
- Xps.tgz PostScript version of the documentation
- Xjdoc.tgz Documentation in Japanese
-
- NOTES:
-
- o Some distributions may have some additional optional tarballs.
-
- If you miss some and want to install them later, you can do so by following
- the appropriate part of the section that describes manual installation.
-
- 3. Installing XFree86 4.0 using the Xinstall.sh script
-
- We strongly recommend that our XFree86 4.0 binary distributions be installed
- using the Xinstall.sh script that we provide. The main reason that we make
- this recommendation is that there are a lot of steps in the manual installa-
- tion process, and those steps can vary according to the situation. There is,
- however, a description of the manual installation process for the most common
- cases below for those who might need it.
-
- Put all of the downloaded files into a single directory (choose some tempo-
- rary location with enough space). Become the super user (root), cd to that
- directory, then run the installer script as follows:
-
- sh Xinstall.sh
-
- Answer the prompts that come up. If you are missing something that is
- required to run this version of XFree86, the installer may tell you to
- install it before trying again. If you don't have all of the mandatory files
- listed above, then the installer will tell you which ones are missing and ask
- you to download them before trying again.
-
- 3.1 Answering the questions that the installer may ask
-
- The installer asks some questions that may not have obvious answers. The
- information here should help you answer them. In most cases, apart from the
- first question, the default answers should be OK.
-
- If you run the installer from within an X session (the installer checks if
- $DISPLAY is set), you will be warned that doing so is not a good idea.
- Unless you have a good reason for knowing that this won't be a problem, you
- should exit your X session, including stopping xdm or equivalent if it is
- running, before continuing. If you ignore this warning and run into prob-
- lems, well, you were warned!
-
- If you have an existing X installation, you will be warned that proceeding
- with this installation will overwrite it. Only those things that are part of
- our standard distribution will be overwritten. Other X applications that you
- may have installed will not be removed. Some configuration files may be
- overwritten though, but the installer should prompt you before doing so. As
- the opening greeting says, it is strongly recommended that you backup any
- existing installation before proceeding. If you want your old applications
- to still be there after you've installed, don't do the "backup" by simply
- renaming your old /usr/X11R6 directory. It is better to make a copy of it,
- and then install over the top of the original one. If you run into problems
- and want to revert to the old installation, you can then delete the overwrit-
- ten one and copy the saved version back.
-
- During the first part of the installation over an existing version, the
- script may remove some old files or directories that would get in the way of
- the new installation. It will list which files/directories have been
- removed. If none are listed, then none were removed.
-
- The next step when installing over an existing version is to check for exist-
- ing configuration files. As of XFree86 version 3.9.18, the run-time configu-
- ration files are installed by default under /etc/X11 instead of under
- /usr/X11R6/lib/X11. The installer will move the existing ones for you and
- create the necessary symbolic links. If you don't want to have these config-
- uration files under /etc/X11, then you should answer "no" when asked about
- it. Answering "no" here also means that the new configuration files will be
- installed in the old /usr/X11R6/lib/X11 location. Note: for the rare systems
- that don't have symbolic links, this question will not be asked. The default
- answer is "yes" because that is best for most situations. It is our new
- default. It makes it easier to share the /usr/X11R6 directory between multi-
- ple hosts, and allows it to be mounted read-only. If you don't need these
- features, then you can safely answer "no" if you don't want them moved.
-
- When installing over an existing version, you will be prompted before each
- set of configuration files is installed. If you haven't made any customisa-
- tions to your existing configuration files, then you can safely answer "yes"
- for each of these. If you have made customisations, you can try answering
- "no". If you run into problems later, you may need to manually merge your
- customisations into the the new version of the configuration files. The con-
- figuration files can all be found in the Xetc.tgz tarball. See the section
- below about manual installation for information about extracting them sepa-
- rately.
-
- After the configuration files have been dealt with, the other mandatory com-
- ponents of the binary distribution will be installed. This should proceed
- without any user intervention.
-
- If you downloaded any of the optional components, the installer will ask you
- about each one before it is installed. The default answer is "yes". If
- there are any that you've since decided that you don't want to install,
- answer "no" when prompted.
-
- After that is done, the main part of the installation is complete. The next
- steps are to tidy up some aspects of the installation. The first of these is
- to run "ldconfig" on systems that require it, so that the newly installed
- shared libraries are accessible. Then the fonts.dir files in some directo-
- ries are updated so that the fonts can be accessed correctly. Next, the
- installer checks to see if your system has a termcap file or terminfo files.
- If it finds the former, it tells you how my may update the entries in that
- file. If it finds the latter, it asks you if you want it to update them for
- you.
-
- Finally, the installer asks you if you want a link created for the rstart
- utility. On most modern systems, the link isn't essential, so the default
- answer is "no". Answer "yes" if you know that you need it. If you find
- later that you need it, you can create it easily by running:
-
- rm -f /usr/bin/rstartd
- ln -s /usr/X11R6/bin/rstartd /usr/bin/rstartd
-
- 3.2 After the installation is complete
-
- The next step is to configure the X server. That is covered in detail in an
- as-yet unwritten document :-(. In the meantime, there are two ways to create
- a basic X server configuration file for XFree86 4.0. One is to run the
- xf86config utility. Another is to use the new -configure X server option:
-
- XFree86 -configure
-
- The X server config file (XF86Config) format has changed compared to 3.3.x.
- Also, its default location is now /etc/X11. Finally, there is now only one X
- server for driving video hardware, and it is called "XFree86". Once you're
- satisfied with the operation of the new X server, you can safely remove the
- old XF86_* and/or XF98_* X server binaries from /usr/X11R6/bin.
-
- After the X server configuration is done, it may be advisable to reboot,
- especially if you run xdm (or equivalent) or the font server (xfs).
-
- 4. Installing XFree86 4.0 manually
-
- This section describes how to manually install the XFree86 4.0 binary distri-
- butions. You should only use this method if you know what you're doing. The
- information here covers some common cases, but not every possible case.
-
- Put all of the downloaded files into a single directory (choose some tempo-
- rary location with enough space). Become the super user (root). All of the
- following commands should be run as root, and they should be run from the
- directory that has all of the downloaded files. The "extract" utility should
- be used to unpack the tarballs. This is a customised version of GNU tar that
- has the gzip code built-in, and which has a different usage when run under
- the name "extract". One important thing that extract does that most versions
- of tar do not do by default is that it unlinks existing files before writing
- new ones. This is important when installing over an existing version of X.
- If you choose to use some other utility to extract the tarballs, you're on
- your own.
-
- 4.1 A new installation
-
- The simplest case is when there is no existing X installation. The installa-
- tion procedure for this case is as follows:
-
- chmod +x extract
- mkdir /usr/X11R6
- mkdir /etc/X11
- ./extract -C /usr/X11R6 X[a-df-uw-z]*.tgz
- ./extract -C /usr/X11R6 Xvfb.tgz # If you are installing Xvfb
- ./extract -C /etc/X11 Xetc.tgz
- ./extract -C /var Xvar.tgz
- ln -s /etc/X11/app-defaults /usr/X11R6/lib/X11
- ln -s /etc/X11/fs /usr/X11R6/lib/X11
- ln -s /etc/X11/lbxproxy /usr/X11R6/lib/X11
- ln -s /etc/X11/proxymngr /usr/X11R6/lib/X11
- ln -s /etc/X11/rstart /usr/X11R6/lib/X11
- ln -s /etc/X11/twm /usr/X11R6/lib/X11
- ln -s /etc/X11/xdm /usr/X11R6/lib/X11
- ln -s /etc/X11/xinit /usr/X11R6/lib/X11
- ln -s /etc/X11/xsm /usr/X11R6/lib/X11
- ln -s /etc/X11/xserver /usr/X11R6/lib/X11
- /sbin/ldconfig /usr/X11R6/lib # For Linux
- /sbin/ldconfig -m /usr/X11R6/lib # For FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD
- /usr/X11R6/bin/mkfontdir /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc
-
- 4.2 Installing over an old installation
-
- If you have an existing installation of X, you should make a backup copy of
- it before installing the new version over the top of it.
-
- Before doing anything else, make sure the extract command is executable, and
- also link it to the name "gnu-tar" so that it can be used as a regular tar
- command:
-
- chmod +x extract
- rm -f gnu-tar
- ln extract gnu-tar
-
- The first part of the procedure is to move the old run-time config files from
- /usr/X11R6/lib/X11 to /etc/X11. Create /etc/X11 if it doesn't already exist.
- For each of the following sub-directories (app-defaults, fs, lbxproxy, prox-
- ymngr, rstart, twm, xdm, xinit, xsm, xserver) that you want to move, check
- that there is a sub-directory of this name in /usr/X11R6/lib/X11. Create a
- sub-directory of the same name under /etc/X11, then copy the files over by
- running:
-
- ./gnu-tar -C /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/subdir -c -f - . | \
- ./gnu-tar -C /etc/X11/subdir -v -x -p -U -f -
-
- For each subdirectory that is moved, remove the one under /usr/X11R6/lib/X11
- and create a symbolic link to the new location:
-
- rm -fr /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/subdir
- ln -s /etc/X11/subdir /usr/X11R6/lib/X11
-
- For those subdirectories that didn't already exist under /usr/X11R6/lib/X11,
- create one under /etc/X11 and create the symbolic link to it:
-
- mkdir /etc/X11/subdir
- ln -s /etc/X11/subdir /usr/X11R6/lib/X11
-
- Once that is done, extract the config files from the Xetc.tgz tarball into a
- temporary directory:
-
- mkdir tmpdir
- ./extract -C tmpdir Xetc.tgz
-
- and then copy each sub-directory over to the installed location:
-
- ./gnu-tar -C tmpdir/subdir -c -f - . | \
- ./gnu-tar -C /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/subdir -v -x -p -U -f -
-
- If you have customised any config files in your old installation, you may
- want to omit those sub-directories, or copy selected files over by hand.
-
- Once that's done, the main part of the installation can be done:
-
- ./extract -C /usr/X11R6 X[a-df-uw-z]*.tgz
- ./extract -C /usr/X11R6 Xvfb.tgz # If you are installing Xvfb
- ./extract -C /var Xvar.tgz
- /sbin/ldconfig /usr/X11R6/lib # For Linux
- /sbin/ldconfig -m /usr/X11R6/lib # For FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD
- /usr/X11R6/bin/mkfontdir /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc
-
- Generated from XFree86: xc/programs/Xserver/hw/xfree86/doc/sgml/Install.sgml,v 1.4 2000/02/29 18:01:17 dawes Exp $
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