Re: Continuing Annoyances...
>1. gdm locks up the keyboard when started at boot time.
>
> X starts, gdm comes up, the mouse works, but you can't type.
> Which also means you can't switch to a virtual terminal to stop
> and restart gdm. (Luckily we have three Unix machines in our
> house, so it's only annoying to have to telnet or ssh in and
> fix the problem.)
I've experienced this problem from time to time as well. I have managed to
"fix" this by hitting "iconify" and opening/closing the loggin window a
couple of times and maybe even clicking my mouse over the area where the
characters you type appear and then it seems to work.
>5. Does gpm work on PowerMacs? If so, how should it be
> configured?
It works on my iMac. According to my notes (I'm in MacOS right now, can't
check), I've got gpm set-up like this:
gpm -m /dev/usbmouse -t ps2
>6. Recent kernels don't work.
>
> 2.2.13 and 2.2.14 (any prerelease patch level -- all from
> standard kernel sources (i.e., *not* vger kernel source -- and
> where is that, these days, anyway?) don't produce functional
> kernels. They cause a machine check in kernel mode, ``probably
> due to mm fault with mmu off''.
I've got an iMac Rev. A running 2.2.13 -- I rsync'd the source from
samba.anu.edu.au -- the source is patched for the powermac. The samba site
has been closed and the source moved. The current powermac source can now
be rsync'd from linuxcare.com.au::linux-pmac-stable and is currently at (I
think) 2.2.14pre16 or something like that. I've got the source, but I can't
get it to compile because of usb driver errors.
Since we're on the subject, here's some stuff that has annoyed me:
1) Delete key doesn't work properly in X. Well, I actually fixed this one a
few nights ago. I had to modify the macintosh keycodes to get this working.
2) I can't figure out how to modify gnome to allow me to use my one button
mouse. I know it's possible to emulate the right/middle mouse buttons as
keys, but I can't figure out how.
3) Sound doesn't work right in X. System beeps work alright, but esound
doesn't seem to work right. At one point, I threw the line "esd &" into one
of the startup file for X (startx? xserver?) right before the window
manager is started up and after that I would hear the enlightment startup
sound whenever I opened X but I still didn't get any sound after that (and
it wouldn't let me activate esound in the config panel).
4) There's no configuration tool for X to make XF86Config (had to figure it
out on my own and beg for help on some of it from others).
Hmm. There are many other things I've had to hack to get Debian set-up on
my iMac, but those are the ones that I've been working on lately. To be
honest, if I could just figure out #2, I'd be really, really happy at this
point. My root desktop in gnome is cluttered with panels because I can't
close them. I know I could just go buy a cheap mouse, but why should I have
to?
Nathan Olsen
nolsen@csulb.edu
"It is our nature to put all knowledge into context in order to tell
a story, and to re-create the world by this means."
--Edward O. Wilson, _Consilience_
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